ARCHITECTURAL SCULPTURE OF GREEK

ARCH ITECTURAL SCULPTURE OK GREEK

A Greek temple could accommodate figurative sculpture, in the triangle of the pediment, as akroteria, and on the frieze, whether it was a Done frieze divided into metopes or an uninterrupted Ionic frieze. The way in which Archaism solved the problems entailed, by adapting the imagery to predetermined architectural frames, was discussed above. Fundamentally, Classicism was only exploiting the formulas gradually perfected during the sixth and very early fifth centuries. Architectural sculpture later than the Temple of Zeus at Olympia, where, as we saw, the hesitations of Archaism ended, thus requires us to consider other aspects of the subject.

First, let us consider the quantity and spatio-temporal distribution of architectural sculpture of the period. Apart from the monuments built outside Greece itself (and there are good reasons for treating them as a separate subject), most of this body of work is found in Athens. In the form of the monuments still standing on the Acropolis, most of the works made in the second half of the fifth century are found there. The Parthenon reigns supreme in the wealth of its decorative sculpture: two pediments, representing on the east pediment (the façade) the birth of Athena, and on the west pediment the dispute between Athena and Poseidon for the possession of Attica; the frieze of metopes and triglyphs, canonically arranged above the colums of a Doric temple and with ornamentation on all four sides of the building, a gigantomachy on the east side, a centauromachy on the south side, an Amazonomachy on the west side and the sacking of Troy on the north side; and finally, the famous Ionic frieze showing the Panathenaic procession, setting out from the west side, namely, the back of the monument, and making its way along the long north and south sides in two symmetrical files which join to the east in front of the assembly of the gods. In the matter of innovation, too, the Parthenon deserves its special place and the high esteem in which it is held today: it went against traditional Done usage for the Panathenaic frieze to be placed at the top of the exterior wall of the cella, and while Archaism had established the thematic homogeneity of the Ionic frieze on all sides of a building, this particular frieze takes the formula to extremes, exploiting the absence of any break at the angles of the building (while the Done frieze, on the contrary, has a strong break at those angles consisting of two adjacent triglyphs) and developing the same subject all round the four sides of the temple. It is the same on the pediment, where the usual figures shown lying in the angles give way to the chariot of the sun apparently rising above the horizon on the left, while the chariot of the moon is going down at the other end.

Besides the great ensemble of the Parthenon, the Acropolis has two more Ionic friezes to offer: the frieze of the Erechtheion, technically unusual in consisting of white marble figures fixed to a band of bluish limestone, although it is far from clear what subject or subjects the figures represent; and the frieze of the small Temple of Athena Nike with an assembly of the gods on the façade, a fight between Greeks and Persians on the sides, and a battle scene between Athenians and Boeotians on the back. Furthermore, the bastion on which the Temple of Athena Nike stands had a parapet with reliefs showing winged Victories preparing to sacrifice to the goddess; the best known is the Victory removing her sandal.


Outside the Acropolis there are some ten other temples of importance for the study of Classical architectural sculpture. In Athens there is the Done temple traditionally called the Theseion, although it was actually consecrated to Hephaistos, and an Ionic temple which still stood on the banks of the river Ilissos in the mid-eighteenth century but is now totally destroyed, although parts of its frieze are preserved in museums in Vienna and Berlin. Also in Athens is the Monument of Lysikrates, dating only from the fourth century, a pseudo-penipteral tholos (rotunda) of the Corinthian order, built in 335/334 BC by one Lysikrates to hold the bronze tripod he had dedicated after a ehoregic victory. In Attica, there is the Doric Temple of Poseidon at Cape Sounion (third quarter of the fifth century). On Delos, we have two temples built by the Athenians. At Delphi there is the last Temple of Apollo, built after the earthquake of 373 BC, and a tholos of almost the same period. In the Peloponnese, we have the Temple of Apollo Epikourios (“the Helper”) at Bassae in Arcadia, built as a votive offering after a plague during the last third of the fifth century; the Temple of Asklepios at Epidauros, and the Temple of Athena at Tegea, both of them dating from the fourth century.


Apart from the Acropolis, not all this architectural sculpture is of equal interest in either thematic originality or quality of execution, or simply because of its state of conservation. In fact many sculptural ensembles have come down to us in a very poor condition, but it has been possible to restore some of them, at least in part; such is the case with the tympanal figures of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. In the second century Pausanias mentioned the statues on the pediments (Apollo, Artemis, Leto and the Muses on the east pediment, Dsonysos and the Thyiades on the west pediment), attributing them to two Athenian sculptors, but the excavators at Delphi initially assumed they had been dismantled at some later date. Over the last twenty years, further examination of innumerable fragments in the the local museum and the subsequent work of re-assembly has made it possible to restore a large part of the axial Dionysus on the west pediment and to locate the remains of many other figures. Still at Delphi, the tholos had two series of metopes; they had been razed to recover some fine square stone slabs, but after much ingenious assembly work the fragments found on the spot have been matched to the backgrounds from which they were taken.


One of the Doric friezes regarded as particularly important is that of the Theseion, with the metopes of the façade showing ten of the labours of Herakles, and the four first metupes on the long sides showing eight deeds of Theseus. Among the Ionic friezes, the frieze of the Theseson is again notable; it is placed at the top of the cella wall, although only on the short sides. Other good examples arc the frieze of the temple at Bassae, showing a centauromachy and an Amazonomachy, once set above the interior colonnade of the cella but now in the British Museum; and the thematically original frieze of the Monument of Lysikratcs. Its subject is taken from a poem which has come down to us, although its date is disputed: the Homeric hymn to Dinnysos, telling how the god was carried off by pirates whom he metamorphosed into dolphins as a punishment. The frieze shows Dionysos seated, caressing a panther (his favourite animal) and surrounded by satyrs who are serving him, while other satyrs, armed with clubs and thyrsi (wands wreathed in ivy), chastise the pirates who are already in mid—metamorphosis. Among the notable pediments are those of the Temple of Epidauros, showing several Amazons as well as other figures, and those of the Temple of Tegea, one of the few buildings to have its tympanal sculpture ascribed by hterary tradition to a famous master. According to Pausanias, Skopas carved the Calydonsan Hunt of the east pediment and, on the rear pediment, the Battle of Caicus, an episode from the story of Telephus, grandson of Aleos, the legendary king of Tegea. Quite a number of fragments have been recovered from the excavations — among them the famous head wearing a lion skin which most people agree must be a Herakles — and many attempts have been made, all equally hypothetical, to determine the relation in which they stood to each other. Finally, of the akroterial statues, the akroterion of the roof ridge of the Temple of the Athenians at Delphi, built around 420, shows Boreas, the deified North Wind, carrying off Oreithyia, daughter of Erechtheus, king of Athens; and from the Temple at Epidauros come a winged woman carrying a bird, and two women on horseback.


Judging by the evidence of both Pliny and numismatic images, the Artemision at Ephestis was unusual in having embellishments on the lower blocks of the columns of the façade. There were already such embellishments in the Archaic temple, said to be endowed by Croesus, and the new temple, rebuilt in the fourth century, maintained the tradition. Among the fragments discovered, the most complete and best known shows a winged youth walking ahead of a draped woman and turning slightly towards her. She is followed by Hermes, shown naked and with lowered caduceus (the god’s wand with two intertwining snakes). Then, partly damaged, come two draped women. Very different interpretations have been put forward, the most likely being that the scene shows a woman going down to the underworld. She may be Alcestis, the virtuous wife who offered to die in place of her husband Admetus. She is led by Hermes in his capacity as “psychopompos”, conductor of souls, and by Thanatos (Death), a winged figure like his brother Hypnos (Sleep).


While there is a great deal of figurative architectural sculpture from the Classical period, it is not evenly distributed: the Parthenon not only has scenes on its two pediments and all the metopcs, but also an Ionic frieze which does not conform to the Doric rule. A differently arranged Ionic frieze also appears on three other Dorsc temples: the Theseson, the temple of Cape Sounion, and the temple at Bassae. But the first has only eighteen decorated metopes, the metopes of the second are left blank, and so are the metopes of the exterior colonnade of the third, although that temple has ornamented metopes at the top of the short walls of the cella. Then there are buildings with the areas for architectural sculpture left blank: the Delphi tholos has two series of metopes, but the tholos of Epidauros, although extremely elegant, has no figurative decoration.


This complex situation can be partly ascribed to preservation; it may even happen, as at Delphi, that pediments believed lost reappear some eighty years after the first excavations. But it is also due, if not to differences of actual period (which are hardly apparent at all between the fifth and sixth centuries), at least to a variety of regional customs. One notices that at Olympsa, and then at Bassae and Tegea, there was a custom peculiar to the Peloponnese of placing ornamented metopes at the top of short celia walls while leaving the metopes of the exterior colonnade blank. Similarly, the carving of the lower parts of the columns in the Artemision of Ephesus is a local peculiarity. Financial reasons must also have been involved, causing reductions in the extent and thus the expense of sculptural ornamentation, but we must admit that there is often no obvious explanation for the presence of embellishments in one place and not another.

The subject matter is almost exclusively mythological and not very varied. Contemporary scenes are unusual. The most notable of them is the Ionic frieze of the Parthenon, showing the participants in the festival of the Panathenaea going in procession all along the temple, like the real procession climbing uphill from the Kerameikos quarter, the area north-west of the Acropolis, to the statue of Athena Parthenos (although it has recently been claimed that past heroes of Athens are shown among them, visual imagery bringing together characters who never co-existed). Then there is the frieze of the Temple of Athena Nike, which seems to show scenes from the Persian Wars, namely, from very recent history. However, the rest of the subjects belong to what we call mythology, including legends of the gods, such as the gigaotomachy with gods and giants in combat, and stories from ancient history such as the “Ilsoupersis” (the sack of Troy), the Calydonian Hunt, and so on. Identification of the various legendary scenes and characters is not always obvious; for instance, opinions on the subject of the akroteria of the temple at Epsdauros have varied widely. Despite these uncertainties, however, a really original subject like that of Dionysos and the pirates on the Monument of Lysiskrates is rare, and we are bound to notice the considerable number of gigantomachies, centauromachies, Amazonomachies and sacks of Troy which populate the Done metopes of the Parthenon, the Ionic frieze of Bassae, and the pediments of Epidauros.

This surprising recurrence of subjects leads one to formulate the question of the relationship between sculptural ornamentation and the edifice upon which it appears in new terms. In discussing Archaism, we studied the way in which the imagery had to conform to architectural constraints, but there is another way for images to relate to a budding: they may also relate to its function or to the individual who commissioned the work. And while sculptural decoration must be strictly subordinated to the frames imposed by the frieze and the pediment, there seems to be more latitude with themes arising from the function and history of the building itself

Sometimes, of course, there can be no argument. The sculptural imagery may refer to the divinity presiding over the temple, although, contrary to expectations, this is not at all frequent. The Parthenon is in fact quite unusual in that its pediments show two incidents from the story of Athena, and its Ionic frieze is a marble record of the procession organized in her honour every four years. Much more often, there are references to local history or the background and pretensions of the patrons who commissioned the work. For instance, the Telephos story on the west pediment at Tegea is explained by the family tree of Telephns whose grandfather was king of Tegea. At Delos, the abduction of Oreithyia depicted on the roof-ridge of the Temple of the Athenians is an Athenian legend, and the same is also true of the Theseid in the anonymous fourth-century temple. Similarly, the Doric frieze of the Theseion depicts the labours of Herakles and the deeds of Theseus, as the Athenian Treasury at Delos had done some decades earlier; the repetition of both themes shows that the juxtaposition of these two series of exploits was not a matter of chance: the Athenians must have wanted to show that their own national hero was as good as the great hero of their Peloponnessan adversaries. However, this relationship between sculptural imagery and the patrons who commissioned it can be regarded as of frequent occurrence only if we accept the almost certain hypothesis which has long been proposed as an explanation of the choice of gigantomachies, centauromachies, Amazonomachies and depictions of the sacking of Troy. The common factor between those four subjects is that the gods or the Greeks (a flattering correlation) are shown conquering either brutes like the giants and centaurs or “barbarians” like the Amazons and Trojans, and consequently:, less than fifty years after the battle of Salamis, such scenes were like a legendary echo of the victories of the Persian Wars. This transference of the very recent to the very distant past explains the predominance of those four subjects, and also the rarity in Greece of what is called, in Roman art, historical relief the representation of contemporary figures and events. The Parthenon is a perfect illustration of these two kinds of iconographic relationship between architectural sculpture and the building upon which it stands. First, the temple consecrated to Athena bears two episodes from her story on the pediments, and shows the ritual of her worship in the Ionic frieze; second, it was built by the Athenians and its metopes are a fourfold commemoration of their victories over the barbarians, transferred to four episodes of the legendary past.

But not all cases are so clear. For instance, there is no obvious reason why the Calydonian Hunt was chosen for the main pediment of the temple at Tegea. Of course scholars have never been short of ingenious explanations for their belief that the sculptural ornamentation of a temple or other building is iconographically linked to it, but such explanations do not always carry conviction, particularly since people often make the customary choice without much thought about it. For in spite of the admiration for Greek art normally felt to be obligatory, from the fifth century onwards it was extremely repetitive. We have only to observe how constantly the type of the Greek temple is found throughout antiquity, or how all Greek architecture comes down to indefinite exploitation of the peripteros, or external colonnade, and the peristyle, or internal colonnade. After all, adaptation of the decoration to the building which accommodates it is no more obvious in other arts; there have been frequent attempts to detect such links in the choice of subjects for mosaics, but in this case too the recurrence of subjects to which artists and their clients were accustomed obviously prevailed over any supposed concern for relevance.

This kind of iconographical laziness, a penchant for returning to the same subjects, is no bar to variations in their treatment, and indeed this is what seems to have interested sculptors most. In the Parthenon, for instance, the centauromachy was to be extended over more than thirty metopes, their rectangular form allowing each metope to show only two characters, but a centaur may be abducting a woman, brandishing a rock, rearing up in various ways, while his adversary may be shown standing and fighting, or with a knee on the ground, or lying down vanquished. The combination of such attitudes produces as many different single combats as there are metopes to be ornamented. At Bassae, by contrast, the centanromachy is shown in an Ionic frieze, so that the fight is no longer separated into single combats. Instead, the continuity of the struggle had to be shown, and accordingly we see a centaur straddling his lifeless comrade as he bites a Lapith, whose leg touches the leg of another Lapith, who is running the other way and is himself attacked by a third centaur who has fallen to the ground, with the knee of a third Lapith on his hindquarters. This Lapith in turn is threatened by another centaur, and so it goes on for dozens of yards. The exercise was even more arduous when the sculptor had to provide a variation on a hackneyed subject without changing the architectural frame. A sculptor who had seen the Ionic Amazonomachy of Bassac might have felt it possible to adapt the theme for a pediment, as at Epidauros, but have been very reluctant to rework it for a second continuous frieze which, as is demonstrated later, was done in the Mausoleum of Halikarnassos. It is not surprising that modern scholars have often been anxious to define the means used by the sculptors of Halikarnassos to distinguish themselves from their predecessors, turning to a more “airy” composition leaving large gaps between the adversaries, making attitudes tenser, drapery less undulating in order to give an impression of “dryness”, and so on.

This accepted ascendancy of skill over the invention of new subjects is seen again in the story of the painter Zeuxis, who was indignant when the strange concept of his centaur family was praised, rather than his skill in executing the painting. But visual art was not alone in producing countless variations on the same theme, and in its reluctance to renew the repertory; literature was just the same. Nine new tragedies were performed every year in Classical Athens, that is, nine hundred in a century, all drawing on the same stock of legends. The old stories were told again and again; the skill lay in making something new out of an old theme. Though few tragedies have come down to us, we have three about the recognition of Orestes by his sister Elektra, and it has become a classic exercise to contrast the play of Euripides with those of Sophocles and in particular Aeschylus, whose weaknesses Euripides criticized. Novelty of plot was not what made a great poet tragic.

THEMES AND STYLES OF CLASSICAL STATUARY: REALISM AND IDEALISM OF GREEK ARTS

THEMES AND STYLES OF CLASSICAL STATUARY: REALISM AND IDEALISM

The advantage of studies of separate artists is that they provide an idea of the variety of artistic personalities and careers in antiquity, and also provide a clear survey of the’ themes of Classical statuary. Even when we have no originals or reliable replicas, the works of the great masters are known to us by name from literary texts, something of great importance in establishing what the repertory was. Conversely, the statues which have been preserved are useful when it comes to assessing the skill of he artists, but present considerable difficulty when it comes to identifying their subjects. However, many of them do seem to fit perfectly into the thematic repertory of the lost statues, and therefore can usefully supplement it.

Probably Myron’s Heifer was so famous throughout antiquity because it was very unusual. In any case statues of animals, already very infrequent in the Archaic period, are in an even smaller minority in the Classical epoch. Almost all the statues show gods or men.

The literary tradition records a vast number of divine statues, principally intended for cult purposes, which is explained by the multitude of temples (often several dozen in a city, and the cities themselves were extremely numerous). No doubt an additional reason, as taste evolved, was a wish to replace old idols which did not always meet with the respect due to their age, judging by the story of Parmeniskos bursting into laughter before the Leto of Delos. To the divine statues may be added what modern scholars, making a slightly misleading distinction, call penonificafions. It is true that the Eirene of Kephnodotos, the Eros of Praxiteles and the Pathos of Skopai (meaning “Peace”, “Love”, and “Desire”), are only representations in human form, or visual anthropomorphizarions, of words where grammatical gender determines the sex of the figure. Eirene is a woman because eirene is a feminine noun, Eros a youth because Eros is masculine. However, it is also true that in a polytheistic system the pantheon is never complete, and the Greeks did not hesitate to welcome new divinities into it, including such “personifications’. We know, for instance, from textual evidence, of the existence of the worship of Eirene, made official in Athens in 374, and of Eros, who had his temple at Thespiae. So the distinction between divinities and personifications of concepts is not clear, and no doubt was not clear even in antiquity. In terms of statuary, however, the obvious significance of their names means that the personifications lend themselves to what might be called discourse through imagery. For instance, the statue by Kephisodotos shows a woman holding a little boy in her arms; Pausanias describes it as “Eirene carrying Ploutos”, which in Creek means that “Peace carries (or brings with it) wealth”, and if Ploutos (the noun is masculine) is still only a little boy, then obviously peace will ensure his growth. However, such “meanings” remain more or less enigmatic, to the point where it was said of the Kairos (Opportunity) of Lysippos that it was little better than a charade. This cannot be historically fortuitous. Himerius, writing at the end of the fourth century AD and no doubt aware of the mechanism explained above, says simply that Lysippos “had enrolled Kairos among the gods”, but it is notable that the Eirene, Eeos, Pothos and Kairos are all from the fourth century BC, aud so in painting were the Demos (People) of Parrhasios and the Dsabolos (Slander) of Apelles. We have only to read Lueian’s account of this last—named painting, full of secondary attributes and personifications, to realize that presenting complex concepts as images was much to the taste of the time.

Whereas divine statuary is at one with the organization of the Greek pantheon in giving plenty of room to goddesses, human statuary is almost always masculine, with a few exceptions like the Phrynes of Praxsteles. As in the works of Myron, Pulyclitus and Lysippos described, it comprises two categories. On the one hand, there are the many individual likenesses, most of them athletes who had been winners at the Olympic Games or other such competitions; these were consecrated in the relevant sanctuaries as votive offerings in thanks for victory. On the other, there is a small number of generic images demonstrating an activity or gesture, such as the Diskobolos of Myron, the Doryphoros and Diadoumenos of Polyclitus, and the Apoxyomenos of Lysippos.

While thematically relevant, the distinction between gods and men is of no stylistic importance, for the anthropomorphism of the Greek divinities makes no clear distinction between divine and human bodies. In this respect, the main point is that statues closely resemble the flesh and bone of the model.’ As mentioned in the discussion of Archaism, a patient might well fear the attentions of a surgeon who had learnt anatomy from the study of a seventh-century kouros, but he might have more faith in one who had taken the Doryphoros as his anatomical model. But this conformity of the sculptured to the living body is very largely generic; differences due to individuality, age or background appear seldom or at a very late date.

The one constant distinction drawn as between the sexes, a feature inherited from Archaism. Over a long period, in the tradition of the kore, female figures remain clothed in thick drapery concealing the body, which meant that sculptors did not concern themselves with anatomical differences of sex. However, sculptors did not wait for Praxsteles to present his nude Aphrodstes in the fourth century (to be followed by many others, such as Timotheos with his Leda and the Sw4n) before discovering, in sculptural terms, those features of the female body that distinguish it from the male. In the middle of the fifth century BC they devised a way of compromising between the requirements of the image and those of the person being represented, between the sculptural exhibition of the female form and the immodesty of showing a goddess or a virtuous woman unclothed (in vase painting, only courtesans are shown entirely nude). This is the effect known as “wet drapery”; the figure is no longer shown wearing several thick and ample garments, but a single layer of very thin fabric which clings to the skin, so that a body both clothed and naked shows through. Among the works employing this effect are the Nike of Paionias at Olympia, the “Venus of Fréjus” in the Louvre, thought to be from a fifth-century original, the Nereids of the Nereid Monument, and in rehefs, the Victories on the parapet of the Bastion of Athena Nike on the Acropolis. There is no doubt, then, that the sculptors of the Classical period were equally able to depict male and female bodies.

Distinctions of age, on the other hand, are exceptional. There are hardly any sculptures of old men except the seated figure in a pediment at Olympia, bald and with sagging flesh, and few children except those in the votive offerings at Brauron, a little boy, and above all the little girl “bears”, the arktoi, whom the young girl at Delphi greatly resembles. The existence of these few examples shows that sculptors of the period had the necessary skill to show age differences, but that such differences were not generally of interest to them. Almost all the men and women of Classical statuary resemble real men and women aged about twenty, but as they encounter no older or younger people within the imagery of sculpture they are essentially ageless: when so few statues show old people and children, it cannot really he said that this is statuary of the young.

Other physical differences are either absent or appear quite late. Vase painting from the sixth century onwards shows Egyptians clearly characterized by their negroid profiles, shaven heads and very obvious circumcision, but ethnic distinctions are absent from Classical statuary. As for individuality of features, there is no evidence that sculptors were capable of showing this before the second half of the fifth century, when the Pericles of Kresilas was produced. (Krcsilas competed with Polyclitus and Phidias to make the wounded Amazon of Ephesus and was thus their contemporary.) In the light of probable replicas this portrait of Pericles, even if not a good likeness — something we cannot judge for lack of personal acquaintance with the famous leader — at least did not show just anyone’s face. Others who depicted individuality were the sculptor Demetrios of Alopeke, whom Luesan calls “creator of human beings” and who, according to Quintifian, was “more in love with likeness than beauty”, and later on Lysippos with his portraits of Alexander. Finally, many statues arc shown in positions which can be held for a long time, such as the pose known by its Cerman name of Spielbein (“trailing leg”) assumed by the Doryphoros. Even if the Diskobolos, Diadoumenos and Apoxymenos appear to be depicted frozen in a momentary attitude, again there is scarcely any evidence (leaving aside lost works such as Myron’s spnnter Ladas, who seemed to be panting) that before the fourth century sculptors were able to show anything of the changes of expression brought by a fleeting emotion. There is still little transitory expression shown except pain, in what is known as the “pathetic” or “Skopas” look, because Skopas introduced a slightly rolling eye and opened lips: a fleetmg expression indeed, which contrasts with the impassive immobility of fifth-century faces.
Thus the intended realism — that is to say, maximum reduction of the gap between the image and what it depicts — which seemed discernible in Archaic sculpture despite the inadequate results, leads in the Classical era to a more satisfactory realism, even if it is usually without distinction of age, individuality of features, or expression of emotion.

The Canon of Polyclitus seems to be an obstacle to this account of the style of Classical statuary. It is true that the few ancient texts which mention it are far from being very illuminating. We know that Polyclitus wrote a treatise entitled Kanon (“rule”), and that he provided a visible illustration of its precepts in a statue also called the Canon, which is the Doryphorus, but sometimes we seem to be dealing with a model of the human body and sometimes with the “rules of art” or liniamenta artis, as Pliny puts it. He adds this surprising statement: “Only Polyclitus is thought to have made art itself in a work of art” (artem ipsam fecisse artis opere). All the same, whether we are speaking of a live or statuary body, there is no doubt — as in Miss World contests today — that the perfection proposed by Polyclitus is a matter of exact measurements: it is “precisely measured”, says Lucian, and Galen adds: “It offers a perfect proportion between all the parts.”

As the beauty of the Canon thus derives from an arithmetical structure and not the faithful reproduction of a real and beautiful body, this approach has been described as “idealism”, as opposed to the “realism” represented by Myron, whose Diskobolos, Ladas, and Athena with the Satyr group were like snapshots holding the truth of a brief moment. “Realism” was also represented by Demetrios of Alopeke, who “preferred likeness to beauty”, and by Lysippos, who might even be called a “naturalist”, since as we have seen, he thought it best to imitate nature and not art. In fact the distinction between Classical idealism and realism is less clear—cut than we might suppose from the strong opposition between the two terms which exists today (as for instance when someone whose head is in the clouds is called idealistic). For one thing, the sculptors described as realist actually incline towards idealism: they all give their statues a “Greek profile”, shown by the study of skulls to have been no more common among the people of antiquity than it is now (it is not found in Archaic statues), or genitals too small to be anatomically likely. Similarly, though he claimed to imitate nature, Lysippos still worked in the tradition of the Canon because he modified its proportions, thereby implicitly accepting its general principle. Above all, the opposition between the ideal and the real is only an apparent one in the Greece of this period. We can tell this from Plato, who was certainly some sixty years later than Polyclitus, but the time gap is no problem because, like any other philosopher, Plato was bound to draw upon both the thought of his own time and on earlier ideas. In his Republic, Plato speaks of the myth of the cavern where most people see only appearances, like the shadows cast by a superior world, the intelligible worid or worid of ideas. A little later in the same dialogue, the comparison between three .kinds of couches is even more explicit: the painter is imitating the couch made by the carpenter, but his painting and this is Plato’s reason for condemning it is an imitation at a third remove, since the carpenter himself is imitating the “idea” of the couch (in Greek, Plato says eidos) which is the work of God: “he does not make (the couch) which is, but something which, without being it, is like (the couch) which is”. In this view of the world, the idea is not a kind of phantasm opposed to reality: it is reality itself, but understood on a superior level, that of the intelligible world to which only philosophers have access, and nothing else exists. “The idea (of the couch) n what the couch is” it is the very essence of the couch.

Their respective dates make it impossible for Polychtus to have been a disciple of Plato’s philosophy and as Plato ranks sculptors among the lower classes in the city, no doubt he would have thought very little of the artist. But today, speaking of Polyclitus or of Classical statuary in general, we talk of idealism, we are well advised to take the term in a Platonic sense and to see it not as anti—realism, but as an endeavour to attain the highest form of the real. Seen as models from which the whole variety of what is perceptible indefinitely proceeds, Platonic ideas are necessarily alien to individuality and contingency. Therefore, if there was idealism in Classical statuary and an entire artistic trend was going in the direction of the “idea” of the body, it must inevitably have given pride of place to the generic and non-temporal. This may well be the explanation of a general rejection of the individual and the fleeting moment. In Archaic statuary, we surmised that realistic intentions were thwarted by mad—equate skills; here, conversely, it may reasonably be argued that idealistic intentions delayed the acquisition of the technical mastery required to render every aspect of what is real: distinctions of age, individuality, ethnic groups and brief moments. This is a mastery that Hellemstic sculpture clearly exhibits.

FIVE MASTER SCULPTORS IN GREEK

FIVE MASTER SCULPTORS IN GREEK


With limits thus set to our knowledge or rather to the possibility of our acquiring it, we are nevertheless able to make a chronological survey of the masters of Greek stat— nary, thanks to the literary texts, to replicas of more or less certain attribution. Among the many great names celebrated by the literary tradition, we will concentrate here on five: three from the fifth century and two from the fourth.


Myron is the earliest of the creek sculptors whose name is known beyond specialist circles. He was born in Eleutherai, on the borders of Boeotia and Attica, at an unknow date, but it is generally agreed that his main career extends over the second third of the fifth century. He worked in bronze and Pliny tells us even more precisely that he used the alloy known in antiquity as Aegina bronze, while Polyclitus used what was called Delian bronze: ‘Of the same age, and fellow’, pupils, they were rivals even in the choice of material.”


Myron is best known today for his Diskobolos (discus thrower), familiar to us from several replicas of varying degrees of fidelity, but his fame in antiquity seems to have been owed to a very different statue. “He was known above all for his Heifer, praised in many epigrams,” says Pliny, and indeed, despite the loss of a large amount of ancient literature, we still have thirty—seven of those poems. It should be said that animal sculpture in Greece was not at all common, especially after Archaic times, and such an exception was worthy of note. Judging by what the literary tradition tells us, the rest of Myron’s work was divided into two almost equal parts. The texts mention ten statues of gods or heroes; of these, according to Pliny, “Minerva and the satyr marvelling at the pipes” deserved special attention. Divine statuary at this time did not generally represent the gods in action, but here Myron seems to have created a sculptural version of a mythological incident to which Pindar alludes at the same period, and which appears on a number of Attic vases: the invention of the flute (or more precisely the aulos, a clarinet- like instrument) by Athena, and her refusal to let Marsyas carry the instrument away although she herself had thrown it to the ground in distaste. The second group of Myron’s works consisted of seven statues of athletes, comprising the Diskobolos (who is alone in representing a generic subject rather than an individual person) and six likenesses of victors in the games. Ladas, winner of the foot-race at Olympia was the subject of one of these. Two Greek poems tell us that the statue showed him with his mouth open, giving the impression that he was panting. Another was of Timanthes, winner of the pankration or all-in wrestling contest, at Olympia, and in on. Ladas was an Argive, Timanthes was from Kleonae, and their statues stood in the sanctuary at Olympia; of the divine statues, Myron made his Hecate for Aegina, his Apollo for Ephesus, and .his group of Zeus, 4thena and Herakles for the Heraion on Samos. This means that he usually worked outside his native area for patrons of different nationalities.


Polyehtus, according to contradictory sources, was from either Argos or Sicyon, neighbouring cities in the northeast of the Peloponnese. Although Pliny mentions him as a fellow student and rival of Myron, Plato, writing only a few years after his death, associates him with Phidias in a. passage in the Protagoras about finding a teacher of sculpture. No doubt these names are not linked solely because of the sculptors’ fame. Polyclitus, like Myron, worked in bronze, preferring “Delian bronze”, as we have seen, and like Phidsas he had also made his name with chryselephantine statuary, especially his Hera for the Herason at Argos; this was so famous that we know nine ancient texts mentioning it, and it appears on Argive coins. Thematically, the works of Polyclitus (or at least those mentioned in the extant texts) resembled Myron’s corpus in dividing into eight statues of divinities or mythological characters, including the Amazon of Ephesus mentioned above, and about the same number of statues of humans, once again including individual statues of Olympic athletes and generic subjects. The latter group contained two youths playing knuckle-bones, and most famous of all, the Diadonmenos (youth crowning himself) and the Doryphoros (spear carrier), known to us from several replicas. However, the parallel with Myron is incomplete, since so far as we know there is nothing in Myron’s work corresponding to the Doryphorns, who not only represented an athletic type like the Diskobolos and the Diadoumenos, but was also part of a highly original project: it was made to illustrate Polyclitus’s theoretical treatise on the beauty of the human body, his famous Canon, a point to which we shall return.


Phidias is perhaps the best known of all the Greek sculptors. (He even featured as a character in a 1918 operetta.) His fame derives from many sources: from his sculpting the Zeus of Olympia, one of the Seven Wonders of the World; from his close friendship with Pericles, whose name is so commonly used to designate the fifth century that on the artistic plane that period might equally well be called “the era of Phidias”; from his important role in the reconstruction of the Acropolis, the finest and largest ensemble of Classical Greek art remaining to us; and for his trial and imprisonment when he was accused of embezzling gold intended for the chryselephantine Athena of the Parthenon. Yet we know very little for certain about this paragon of Greek sculpture, beyond what literary texts tell us. According to Pliny, Phidias began his career as a painter. That is not very surprising, since in the next century Euphranor was known as a practitioner of both arts. Since nothing definite can be said about this master, books on the history of Greek sculpture are very ready to credit him with many anonymous marbles, in particular the decoration of the Parthenon, imagined by many people to be his own work. This idea must be discounted. In fact, in a chapter of his Life of Pedclei devoted to the great building works of Athens, Plutarch says only that “Phidias supervised everything for Pericles, although he had great architects and artists for this work (...); he was in command of all the artists, because he was the friend of Pericles.” Phidias was the episkopos, a term which has given us “episcopal” and related words in modern European languages. In Greek it means someone who, on whatever hierarchical level, is a “super-visor”, one who “over-sees”, and so does not necessarily mean an actual practitioner or one who carries out the work. The illusion that the sculpture of the Parthenon, so well preserved, consists of the great man’s original works and provides us with an opportunity of studying his style at first hand must therefore be relinquished. None of the texts claim it as his, and as was pointed out earlier in this book, however fine architectural sculpture may now appear to us, it was probably beneath the dignity of an artist like Phidias to work on it.


We are therefore left with the statues named by ancient authors. Some two hundred mentions of Phidias have been counted in their writings, but this large number is evidence of his exceptional fame rather than any special productivity on his part. As with Myron and Polyclitus, we know of some twenty statues made by Phidias, but this time they are almost all of gods and goddesses, the most famous in antiquity being the chryselephantine Zeus of Olympia. There were no less than seven Athenas among them, including the statue already mentioned which was made in competition with Aikamenes, and above all (both of them on the Acropolis) the colossal bronze Athena Promachos standing in the open air, and the chryselephantine Athena Parthenos snside the Parthenun. Because of their fame, ancient authors un occasion attempted to descnbe these statues, sometimes at length; Pausanias’s account of the Zeus of Olympia occupies some ninety lines of a recent edition. But for us, the absence of well—attested rephcas reduces most of his works to a name and a few details. The one work about which we know more is the Athena Parthenos, first because Pausanias has left us a detailed description: “[The Athena Parthenos of Phidias] is a statue of ivory and gold; on top of her helmet stands the likeness of the Sphinx, with griffins on each side (...) The statue of Athena is standing, with a chiton falling to her feet; on her breast the head of Medusa is represented in ivory. (The work includes?) a Victory some four cubits in height; in her hand Athena holds a spear; her shield is placed at her feet; near the spear is a dragon, thought to be Erichthonios. The base of the statue shows the birth of Pandora, a story told by Hesiod and other poets.” Plato tells us that while the statue’s face, hands and feet were ivory, the pupils of the eyes were made of marble. Other authors speak of the chasing on the shield, which bore an Amazonomachy on the exterior and a gigantomachy on the interior surface, and of her sandals, whose edges were ornamented with a centauromachy. We also have some definite replicas of the statue, identifiable from the derail provided by these authors. They comprise several statues and statuettes in marble, particularly the Lenormant Athena in the National Museum in Athens, fourteen inches in height, and the “Varvakeion Athena” , measuring over three feet. While these copies may seem iconographically faithful when compared with the textual descriptions, some of them look so ugly (particularly the Varvakeion Athena, although she seems to be the most exact likeness) that one finds oneself hoping that they are not good replicas stylistically. However, the reduction in scale obliterates details which must have given pleasure to viewers in antiquity, like the chasing on the shield and sandals, and quite apart from the theological constraints which obliged Phidias to give his Athena various attributes, the taste of the ancient Greeks may well have differed greatly from our own.


The works of these three great fifth—century sculptors have a number of points in common. It is a very different matter when we come to Praxiteles who, says Pliny the Elder, flourished (he was at the peak of his career) at the time of the 104th Olympiad, around BG. This information is confirmed by Pansansas, who situates him “in the third generation after Alkamenes”. There is no doubt of his great fame or the fame of some of his works: among the texts of antiquity mentioning him which have been preserved, several distinctly emphasize his renown, and the considerable number of those texts — a hundred and ten is further proof. Yet it is still not easy to write a monograph on Praxiteles. His biographical details are very few: he was an Athenian and seems to have been the son of a celebrated sculptor, Kephisodotos, known to us as the author of a statue of peace carrying the infant Ploutos (wealth); but we do not know his dates of birth and death, and therefore how long he lived, something that would have been interesting in view of the exceptionally large number of his works. One anecdote is mentioned several times in literary texts, and may be of significance with regard to his choice of artistic themes. He was the lover of the courtesan Phryne, who came from Thespiae in Boeotsa, and was famous for the unusual way in which she was acquitted in a trial for impiety. Accused by one of her lovers, she was defended by another, the orator Hypereides, who, feeling his own eloquence was not carrying the day, found it more effective to denude his client before her judges. It is interesting to note that unlike Phidias, who preferred the love of boys (it was said that his lover Pantarehes had been the model for one of the eight statues ornamenting the throne of Zeus at Olympia), Praxiteles, sculptor of the famous nude Aphrodite of Knidos, was a lover of women.
We do not know much about the works of Praxiteles either. The texts suggest that like many famous sculptors, Praxiteles had worked in places very far apart, including Megara, Mantinea, Athens and Knidos, a fact confirmed by bases bearing the inscription “Praxiteles made this”, which have been found during excavations in places as far apart as Athens, Leuctra and Olbia, although some of them may have borne replicas as originals (this, as we shall see, seems to have been the case with the famous Hermes of Olympia). However, although the geographical dispersal of statues by Praxiteles is well established, their chronological order is not clear to us, and scholars can only argue from similarities in trying to place them in order. Again, a systematic collating of the ancient texts allows us to compile a list of his works, but very few of them can be definitely identified from replicas. Of those few, the most important are the Apollo Sauroetonos, identifiable by its unusual subject, and three statues which, luckily for us, turn out to be major works. These are the Aphrodite of Knidos, which “features so prominently in the first rank of works not only by Praxiteles but in the whole world,” writes Pliny, “that many people have made the voyage to Knidos to see her”, and two male statues known to have been the sculptor’s own favourites from an anecdote told by Pausanias: “Phryne asked him to give his most beautiful work; as he was her lover, he promised, but would not tell her which he thought the most beautiful. Phryne’s servant came to tell Praxiteles that fire had broken out in his house, but all was not destroyed. The sculptor asked whether the fire had seized upon the Satyr or the Eros (...) and therefore Phryne took the Eros.” According to another author, she dedicated it at Thespiae. But the replicas of most of the other statues mentioned in the texts are of doubtful attribution, since it is very difficult to distinguish retrospectively between the style of Praxiteles, known to us only indirectly, and that of his contemporaries or imitators, who must have come quite close to it. For instance, it is tempting but unwise to take the famous “Diana of Gabii” in the Louvre, showing the goddess fastening a cloak on her shoulder, for a copy of the Artemis Brauronia on the Acropolis of Athens, to whom women made votive offerings of garments after coming safely through childbirth. The Hermes of Olympia also has a place in this attempt to find replicas which will allow us to visualize what the texts describe. Nineteenth—century German archaeologists excavating at the temple of Hera dug up a slightly mutilated marble statue which must have been seven feet high when intact, showing an athlete holding a very small boy in his left arm. In his description of the sanctuary at Olympia Pausanias remarks on the presence “in the Heraion of a marble Hermes carrying the infant Dionysos, the art (techne) of Praxiteles”. The description and statue agree so perfectly that the first scholars to study it took it for an original, but careful examination of the workmanship has now forced us to admit that it is a copy. Although rigorous archaeological standards demand that we exercise restraint in making claims about the number of original works for which there are well—attested replicas, many specialists go to the other extreme. They not only persist in searching for replicas of all the works mentioned in the texts, but also attribute to Praxiteles statues of which the texts say nothing at all; for instance, the wholly anonymous Marathon Ephebe has been attributed to him. All the same, it is legitimate to study both the texts and the reliable replicas with a view to distinguishing certain characteristics of Praxitelean statuary.


In the first place, there is the considerable number of his works; almost fifty of them, over twice as many as we know Myron, Polyclitus or Phidias to have made. But this leads to speculation about the circumstances of their creation. Is this abundance owed to longevity, facility, the many commissions brought by his fame, or is it the product of a new and (to our minds) more modern approach to art, one that impelled the artist to work even without a commission, as we have seen occurred with Polyclitus’s Canon, and perhaps even with Myron’s Diskobolos? Although these questions cannot be answered for certain, there is much in favour of the last hypothesis, that Praxiteles often worked without a commission. First, there are the anecdotes. In the story just quoted, of Phryne and how she caused the sculptor to believe his house was on fire, it is unlikely that he would have kept both the Satyr and the Eros there at the same time if they already had definite destinations. Similarly, the Aphrodite of Knidos cannot have been made on commission, for Pliny explains that “he had made two statues, (one naked) and the other clothed, and sold them at the same time”, the first to the people of Knidos and the second to the people of Kos, who thought the clothed version more decorous. Then there is the recurrence of the same subjects, perhaps reflecting the sculptor’s personal taste rather than commissions: we know of five Aphrodites, two or three statues of Eros — although his cult was too insignificant in Greece to require many images — and two statues of Phryne, his mistress.
Praxiteles’s independence of commission must have affected his choice of subjects. At first sight his themes do not seem very different from those of the three masters of the previous century, divided as they are between statues of divinities and statues of humans in proportions of about two-thirds to one-third, but Praxiteles must have chosen his own subjects more frequently. In several cases there is no indication in literary texts that a work was made on commission, or even for a precise destination, and such a tendency towards a personal choice of subject matter was in the air at the time anyway. When the painter Zeuxss was irritated to hear that the public had praised “the oddity of the concept” of his picture of a centaur family rather than “the skill of its execution”, he did not deny that the “unusual nature of the subject” broke with the earlier tradition of centauromachies. Nor can one be far wrong in supposing that Phryne’s lover took pleasure in creating statues of her, or as was claimed in antiquity, used her as a model for the Aphrodite of Knidos.


The Aphrodite illustrates a third point, or rather a novelty in the art of Praxitcles: the presentation of the statues is different. The female body, traditionally shown in long garments (although in the fifth century the new method of depicting “wet drapery” indicated the shape beneath them), could now be displayed naked. If the Venus of Arles in the Louvre (set up there and completed by Gsrardon under Louis XIV in the taste of the period) is really a replica of the Aphrodite of Thespiae, about which we know nothing but the fact of its existence, it seems that the goddess was bare—breasted, but in any case the Aphrodite of Knidos is entirely nude, whence the shocked reaction of the people of Kos. This liking for female nudes in statuary may also be echoed in the more youthful male bodies now depicted. Statues such as the Satyr, the Eros or the Apollo Sauroctonos, barely pubescent, seem as much like women as grown men. Positions change too; judging by the replicas, the Eros and the Sauroctonos have one arm raised, like the Hermes of Olympia, and the body leans over in a curve, unlike the more erect stance and greater stability of statues like the Doryphoros. This sideways bend of the hip partly explains another novelty; with her left hand, the Aphrodite of Knidos was laying her clothes on a vase placed at her feet, and similarly a tree trunk stood beside the Eros of Thespiae. The Satyr was also resting his elbow on a tree trunk, while the Sauroctonos leans his weight on the tree up which the lizard is running, a tree which is taller than he is. Not only, then, did such items sketch in the decor so often absent from statuary (in these cases suggesting a rural setting or a bathroom), but most important of all, they provided the support necessary when the statue’s centre of graviti was out of line with the vertical.


Assistance from a support was even more necessary when the statue was made not of bronze but of marble. This was another innovation introduced by Praxiteles; he broke with the usual hierarchy of materials. He does not seem to have worked in chryselephantine; on the other hand, to mention only his most famous works, the Sauroctonos was bronze but the Eros of Thespsae and the Aphrodite of Knidos were marble. Hence the opinion of Pliny: “Praxiteles was most successful and made his name in marble; however, he did make very fine works in bronze.” Diodorus suggests a reason for this success: “He incorporated the feelings of the soul to the highest degree in works of marble.” Furthermore, painting, probably with encaustic, added a further attraction to marble, and one which Praxiteles liked: “When he was asked,” says Pliny again, “which of his works he thought the best”, he said: ‘Those upon which Nikias worked.’ so much did he value that artist’s painting”. It should be added that Nskias was not just an ordinary assistant, but one of the great Athenian painters of the fourth century.


Lysippos, a native of Sicyon, a large city in the region of Corinth, is chronologically the last great name in Classical sculpture, one might even say in Greek sculpture, for although we do not know his dates of birth and death, he was a contemporary of Alexander the Great.


This fact in itself gives him a special place, since he was the court sculptor to Alexander, just as Apelles was the court painter. The evidence of the texts of antiquity agrees on this point: “For preference, Alexander liked to be painted by Apelles and to have his statue made by Lysippos,” writes Cicero. This “preference” becomes exclusivity in several other authors, including Horace, who said that “Alexander issued an edict forbidding anyone but Apelles to paint him, and anyone but Lysippos to cast him in bronze.” The reason, according to Plutarch, was that Lysippos faithfully reproduced the king’s features; but in any case we have here a sculptor figuring as official court artist, a new post which almost certainly did not exist in the small democratic and oligarchic cities of Classical Greece but which was made possible, in Alexander’s time, by the advent of a Hellenic monarchy. As a matter of fact Pliny tells us that “he made many statues of Alexander, including one of Alexander as a child”, and makes particular mention, confirmed by other authors, of the Lion Hunt of Delphi and the “turrna Alexandri” (the “Squadron of Alexander”), “for which he made statues that were perfect likenesses of all the king’s friends”. He also created a statue of Hephaistion, who was to Alexander what Patroclus was to Achilles.
However, the entire career of Lysippos covered more than the eleven years of Alexander’s conquests. He was so prolific that Pliny rightly or wrongly credits him with fifteen hundred works. Among those known to us by name are nine statues of divinities, including an Eros at Thespiae which might suggest a wish to compete with Praxiteles; several statues of Herakles; and various other portraits besides those of Alexander and his followers. Especially interesting is the Apoxymenos (athlete scraping himself with a strigil). In representing a type rather than an individual he is in the tradition of the Diskobolos of Myron and the Doryphoros of Polyclsrus. Also interesting for its novelty and strangeness is the Kairos (opportunity): a boy with wings and winged feet shown running, his hair abundant on the front of his head, but bald behind, a razor in his right hand and scales in his left. “By making a statue of opportunity,” comments Himerius (in about AD 350), “Lysippos was explaining its nature in images.”


It is no easier for us to get an idea of Lysippos’s style than of that of earlier sculptors. No originals have been preserved; replicas present the usual problems, apart from the “Thessahans” of Delphi which, unusually, seem to be marble copies dating from the same period as the original consecrated at Pharsalus; and then there is the imprecision of the descriptive terms used to describe his artistic style. He was held in high regard in antiquity for his strict observance of symmetria, his constantia and his e1egsntia, hut these words are too general to be of use to us now. One point at least is clear: “He made heads smaller than his predecessors, and bodies shmmer and leaner, so that his statues would look taller and more graceful”, writes Pliny. Indeed, whereas the head of the Doryphoros, representing the Canon of Polyclirus, is one-seventh of the entire body, the Apoxymenos (or at least the replica of the Apoxymenos in the Vatican), which must have been a kind of rival Canon of Lyssppos, is much less stocky, this rime with proportions of one to eight. Finally, although this cannot be verified, Pliny credits Lysippos with a view of great importance for the whole concept of artistic creation: he is said to have adopted a precept of the painter Eupompos who, on bring asked which of his predecessors he had taken as model, pointed to the crowd and said that one should imitate nature itself, not another artist.