Read Ebook: Hellenistic Sculpture by Dickins Guy Gardner Percy Author Of Introduction Etc Dickins Mary Editor
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The outstanding feature of the history of Greek sculpture during the Hellenistic period is the transference of its vital centres from the mainland to the new kingdoms of the Diadochi on the east and south and to the great new free state of Rhodes. The chief cause was an economic one. Alexander's campaigns brought about a revival of prosperity and wealth in the Greek world, but among his friends and not among his enemies. Athens was always his enemy and the enemy of his Macedonian successors. Consequently during the whole period from the death of Alexander to the Roman conquest Athens was either under Macedonian rule or in danger of Macedonian attack. It was Macedonian policy to keep her weak and isolated, and her trading supremacy began to be transferred to the island of Delos. The great days of Attic art passed with the death of Praxiteles and the coming of Alexander. In the Peloponnese the pupils of Lysippos carried on into the third century the traditions of the Sikyonian school, but we can see from such knowledge as we possess of their activities that the wealth and fame of the new kingdoms were already calling the artists to abandon the impoverished towns of the mainland. The Peloponnese also opposed Alexander and his successors, and Macedonian garrisons held the chief fortresses of the country. We find Eutychides of Sikyon working for Antioch, and Chares working at Lindos in Rhodes. After the date given for the pupils of Lysippos in 296 B.C., Pliny makes the following significant statement: 'cessavit deinde ars, ac rursus Olympiade CLVI revixit.' For 150 years the history of artistic development must be studied on the eastern side of the Aegean.
After the preliminary conflicts between the successors of Alexander for the partition of the empire a number of new states arose, which are known to us usually as the kingdoms of the Diadochi or Successors. Of these the three most important were Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, under the rule of Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies respectively. Of smaller importance, but quite independent and self-sustaining, were Bithynia, Pergamon, and the island republic of Rhodes, the latter being the only one which maintained its Hellenic democratic institutions. The attitude of these states towards art differs remarkably. Macedonia remained always a military monarchy in a condition of almost constant frontier war, and was wholly uninterested in artistic developments. Syria seems from the first to have fallen under Semitic and oriental influences, which destroyed its appreciation of the purer forms of Greek art. Bithynia, Pontos, and Cappadocia were barbarian rather than Greek. As a result, we find that the old artistic traditions are maintained prominently in three only of the new states: Pergamon, the home of the very Hellenic race of the Attalids; Rhodes, whose pure Hellenic descent was untouched; and Alexandria, which became practically a Greek town in the midst of an older Egyptian civilization.
One of the most important of the Pergamon finds was the little bronze satyr, which has enabled us to associate with Pergamon a whole host of satyr types of more or less similar style. The Dancing Satyr of Pompeii and Athens, the Satyr of the Uffizi clashing cymbals, with its replica in Dresden, and the Satyr turning round to examine his tail are all variants of the new artistic cult of the satyr, a cult which seems to have had a Pergamene origin. The satyr gave to the Pergamene artist just that opportunity for the display of wild and somewhat sensual enthusiasm which he wanted, for new and original poses, and for combination with his nymphs and bacchanals. In Phrygia especially orgiastic manifestations of religion were the regular practice, and dancing was both wild and universal. The new artistic conceptions show the clear influence of this spirit on the more restrained art of the fourth-century schools. The Dancing Maenad of Berlin, the Aphrodite Kallipygos of Naples, and the famous Sleeping Hermaphrodite are further examples of the marvellous flesh treatment and the wild frenzy of movement which we learn to associate with third-century Pergamene art.
We come now to the two great dedications of Attalos for his victories over the Gauls. These were made at some time later than 241 B.C., and consist of two series of statues. One is life-size or larger, and is represented by some of the best-known examples of Hellenistic sculpture, such as the Dying Gaul and the Ludovisi group of a Gaul slaying his wife and himself . The other consisted of a number of small figures about three feet high, and was dedicated by Attalos in Athens, where they stood on the parapet of the south wall of the Acropolis. Four battle-groups were included--a gigantomachy, an Amazonomachy, a battle of Greeks and Persians, and a battle of Greeks and Gauls. Several copies from this smaller group are in existence, the best known being in Naples. The originals of both groups were probably in bronze, and we have the names of some of the artists of the larger group, Phyromachos, Antigonos, and Epigonos or Isigonos. Stratonicos and Niceratos of Athens may also have taken part.
The little figures in Naples, the Louvre, Venice, and elsewhere are partly recumbent dead figures of Persians, giants, and Amazons, and partly crouching figures defending themselves. None of the victorious Greeks seems to have survived, except possibly the torso of a horseman in the Terme Museum. They are dry, rather hard figures, much inferior in skill to the larger group and much closer to the bronze originals which they represent. The head of a dead Persian in the Terme Museum is probably a more worthy copy of one of the figures of this series. Its type of features and its moustache resemble the Ludovisi Gaul. Another fine Gallic head is in the Gizeh Museum at Cairo . This has been often called an original, an Alexandrian variant of the Gallic dedications. There is, however, no need to separate it from the others. If it shows more emotion, that only brings it rather closer to what we know of earlier Pergamene art. The provenance of the Gizeh head is disputed, and it may be only a recent importation into Egypt.
We have already seen that relief sculpture at all stages of its history is closely affected by the kindred art of painting. During the fourth century painting underwent changes in the direction of naturalism as marked as, if not more marked than, the corresponding changes in sculpture. The late fourth century and the third century form the great period of Greek painting, in which the names of Parrhasios, Protogenes, and Apelles stand supreme. A true and correct feeling for perspective and a naturalistic scheme of colouring were the main discoveries of the period, discoveries which we are only able to appreciate in very roundabout methods through Pompeian wall-paintings and mummy-cases from the Fayum. All Hellenistic sculpture is profoundly influenced by painting, as we shall see; but naturally the art of relief is nearest akin and shows most clearly the effects of graphic ideas. The Hellenistic reliefs are almost all adaptations of pictures, and the Telephos frieze earns its main interest and reputation because it is one of the first monuments to show this influence very clearly. We find a true use of perspective in part of this frieze, and a deliberate intention to create the impression of depth.
One of the first results of these innovations was to free relief from its subordination to architecture. It begins now to take its place as a self-sufficing artistic object like a picture. Greek pictures were mainly of the fresco type, and therefore immovably fixed to walls, though easel pictures now begin to be more frequent. There was nothing dissimilar in the position of a relief decorating a wall-panel without architectural significance. This idea found its earliest manifestation in Ionia with friezes of the Assos type on an architrave block, and therefore at variance with architectural principles. Friezes as wall decorations appear commonly in the Ionian buildings of the fifth and fourth centuries, like the Nereid and Trysa monuments and the Mausoleum. We find in the Hellenistic age the use of panels as wall decorations quite frequent all over Asia Minor. Thus at Cyzicus we have some curious mythological reliefs called Stylopinakia, which appear to have been panels fixed between the columns of a peristyle. We have the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, a clear instance of the decorative panel with a pictorial background; we have smaller pieces like the Menander relief in the Lateran; the visit of Dionysos to a dramatic poet; and all the series of so-called Hellenistic reliefs ascribed by Schreiber to an Alexandrian origin, by Wickhoff to the Augustan age and Italian art. The reliefs, like other sculpture of the Hellenistic age, cannot be judged as a whole. Some are Augustan, like the reliefs in the Palazzo Spada, and some are undoubtedly Alexandrian, like the Grimani reliefs in Vienna. Others, again, show a strong Lysippic influence, which at once connects them with Rhodes. The Telephos frieze, however, is Pergamene, and the Cyzicus reliefs must have fallen mainly in the Pergamene sphere of art. We are, therefore, entitled to demand a separation of the reliefs into just as many classes as the sculpture. A fine piece of very high relief from Pergamon is the group of Prometheus on the Caucasus freed by Herakles. Besides the influence of pictures on relief there is also the influence of earlier sculpture. One of the figures in the Telephos relief reproduces the Weary Herakles of Lysippos. It would not be difficult to point out other examples of the adaptation of older types. The Marsyas group is itself a case in point. The indifference of the Hellenistic artist to his subject made him the readier to adapt earlier types, provided he had a free hand for his details of execution and expression.
The figures of Pergamene art as a whole are short and stocky with squarish deep heads. They correspond to the Scopaic, pre-Lysippic, and Peloponnesian type, but the Lysippic improvements in pose and swing of the body are thoroughly appreciated and adopted. From Praxiteles are derived the female type and the interest in the satyr as a vehicle of sculptural expression. The athletic art of Lysippos and the school of Sikyon is practically unrepresented at Pergamon or in those regions of Ionia and Bithynia which are connected with it and at which we must now glance.
From Priene we have remains of a gigantomachy and some other sculpture. The influence of Praxiteles is marked, and the work as a whole is clearly under Pergamene guidance. From Magnesia we have remains of a great Amazonomachy belonging to the frieze of the temple of Artemis Leucophryene and dating from the end of the third century. The work is dull and careless but strongly under the influence of Pergamon. We shall in fact find no more architectural reliefs of even tolerable quality. The new landscape or pictorial reliefs occupied the attention of the sculptors, and temple decoration was left entirely to workmen.
One of the great Hellenistic art centres is Tralles, whose treasures are mainly to be seen in the Constantinople museum. The colossal Apollo or Dionysos is closely connected in pose and treatment with the Apollo of the Marsyas group, and shows even more clearly than the torso in the Uffizi the influence of Praxiteles. The cloaked ephebe of Tralles is a good example of the eclecticism of the age. The leaning attitude with the crossed legs reminds us of the satyrs of Praxiteles and his school, but the head is quite different and is strongly reminiscent of Myron. Boethos of Chalcedon belongs by birth to the northern or Pergamene sphere of influence, but he worked in Rhodes and will be more suitably considered in connexion with Rhodian art. Pergamene influence was also strong in the islands and on the mainland. We shall see that the school of Melos and both Attic and Peloponnesian art during the late third and second centuries were obviously affected by it.
THE SCHOOL OF ALEXANDRIA
We know the connexion of Alexandria with Athens was close in the late fourth century, especially during the rule of Demetrios of Phaleron in its closing decades. It was at this time that Bryaxis made the Sarapis , which has perhaps survived for us in the innumerable copies of a wild-haired, heavily bearded head with shadowed mysterious eyes. During the next century Macedonia was the chief foe of Athens and of the Ptolemies, and all the earlier Egyptian rulers were on close terms of friendship with the city. Thus a predominant influence of Athens and of the greatest of the fourth-century Athenian sculptors, Praxiteles, is only what we should anticipate in Alexandrian art. It has, however, been argued that we have no evidence for a native art of Alexandria at all. While importing much late Attic sculpture, she borrowed also from Pergamon works like the Gaul's head at Cairo, and from Antioch a group like the Dresden Aphrodite with the Triton. She was in fact a collecting rather than an originating centre.
This view is improbable on many grounds. The Egyptians were a people with a keen artistic sense, and the sudden introduction of a new race like the Greeks with their passion for cultural expression could hardly fail to give an impetus to artistic output. Moreover, a great revival in architecture is noticeable all over Egypt. The Ptolemaic age is one of the great building periods of the Nile valley. Further, our authorities are unanimous on the importance and brilliance of the Alexandrian school of painting, and we know that in gem-cutting Pyrgoteles started a development never surpassed in antiquity or modern times. In literature, in criticism, and in science the museum of Alexandria held the chief place, and it is impossible to suppose that Egypt remained a mere collector of sculpture without any original development of her own. We must, therefore, examine the artistic products of Hellenistic Egypt to see if they exhibit any technical peculiarities marking them off from other Hellenistic centres and compelling us to credit them with a local origin.
Another head of Alexandrian origin is the fine bearded head of the Capitol Museum , which is really almost a mask with the whole of the top and sides of the head left for stucco additions. The rough blocking of the beard shows the artist's impressionist leanings. The long face is purely Attic, though perhaps closer to Bryaxis or some later artist than to Praxiteles. The head is more or less akin to the Sarapis head and to the other much finer bearded head which stands in close relation to the Sarapis, the well-known Zeus of Otricoli . In the Otricoli head we have a similar prominence of the cheek-bones, a similar narrowing of the forehead above the frontal sinus--Attic features but not Praxitelean. The Otricoli Zeus is also a marble work cut for stucco additions, some of which are still visible, and we should probably recognize in it another work of early Alexandrian origin. It is perhaps not too daring to see the prototype of these Attic-shaped non-Praxitelean Alexandrian bearded heads in the Sarapis of Bryaxis. Bryaxis or some other late Attic artist seems to have affected the bearded male type of Alexandria much as Praxiteles influenced the feminine ideal. Nottingham Castle contains a bearded head from Nemi, which belongs to the same class of work. Here again we have the hair added in stucco and a general resemblance to the Otricoli type.
One of the new Greco-Alexandrian types was naturally the goddess Isis. A head in the Louvre gives us a version of this figure, which still, even in a poor Roman copy, shows us something of the languid elegance of the original. There is no traceable influence of Scopas in Alexandrian art. The Praxitelean and Attic tradition was transferred pure, and therefore the liveliness of movement and action in Pergamene art is quite absent from the art of Alexandria. Statues are mainly small, partly perhaps for economy, and partly from the lack of all desire for comparison with the gigantic masterpieces of ancient Egypt, and they are limited to simple standing or seated poses. An interesting statue of obvious Alexandrian origin is the priest of Isis in the Capitol , which has been wrongly restored with a female head. This head is itself Alexandrian, as its hair demonstrates, but it has no connexion with the body, which is male, though draped in a light clinging tunic. The tunic is interesting as giving us a good example of Alexandrian drapery. We may notice the very small closely set folds, and the extreme realistic care with which the loose parts of the drapery are distinguished from those tightly stretched. There is an element of artificiality no doubt in the way in which the folds radiate from the great jar carried against the chest and in their close symmetry of design, but as a whole the effect of texture is marvellously well secured. We have here a good example of the naturalism which now plays a large part in Alexandrian art.
Another statue which we must claim for Alexandrian art is the Capitoline Venus , an extremely interesting statue not only as a first-rate original but from its relation to the Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles. The face and the hair show the usual qualities of Alexandrian impressionism; the fringed mantle thrown over the water-pot is the mantle of the Egyptian Isis, and the foreshortening of the foot of the amphora is just the pictorial touch we expect in Alexandrian art. But the most interesting light which this statue throws on Alexandrian art is its directness and want of subtlety in motive. The goddess of Cnidos is naked, but she is only half-conscious of her nakedness. Her eyes are fixed on eternity, and the actual bath is a mere accessory like the child of the Hermes. But the Capitoline goddess is not thinking of eternity at all. She is stepping into her bath, and is suddenly aware of a spectator's gaze. She is the classical counterpart of Susannah in Renaissance art. All the vague beauty of the Attic statue is lost by the touch of Alexandrian realism, which amounts almost to vulgarity. As to the treatment of the body it is again real and not ideal. The back in particular shows a close study of the model without any of the selective idealism of classical art. Like the beautiful torso in Syracuse it is a marvellous study from nature, not marked by any vestige of idealism.
Another head in the Capitol, the so-called Ariadne , perhaps really a Dionysos, also suggests an Alexandrian origin with its long face, eyes close together, and crinkly hair. It is a very favourite Roman head often copied, and must belong to some famous original. It wears a band, which presses into the hair, and its sleepy languid gaze is remarkable. This is produced by making the upper eyelid nearly straight and the lower one well curved. The face is long and heavy. Both eye-shape and head recall the Boston girl from Chios and other Alexandrian statues. The surface of the face is highly polished, the hair left crinkly and rough--an Alexandrian procedure. If we can accept this head, we must class with it two heads of identical facial type, the Eubouleus of Eleusis sometimes attributed to Praxiteles, and the so-called Inopos from Delos in the Louvre . Alexandrian dedications might plausibly be expected at Delos and Eleusis. Both Inopos and Eubouleus are highly impressionist. We have said enough to show that what we may call the serious art of Alexandria had certain characteristics of technique and execution, which render not impossible an attempt to classify and arrange an Alexandrian school of sculpture. We must now turn to another side of Alexandrian art which, if of less artistic interest, is nevertheless of paramount importance in our study of Hellenistic art.
The Hellenistic reliefs may be divided into three classes: the pastoral reliefs such as the scenes showing sheep and a lioness and cubs, called the Grimani reliefs, in Vienna; mythological reliefs like the Bellerophon and Pegasus of the Palazzo Spada, or Perseus and Andromeda of the Capitol in Rome; and more complicated little scenes or groups like the Menander relief of the Lateran, the Apotheosis of Homer, the slaying of the Niobids, or the visit of Dionysos to a dramatic poet. They are all closely related to painting--how closely a reference to Pompeian wall-paintings or mosaics like the famous Praenestine pavement will show--but there are some differences between the groups which are worthy of mention. The pastoral scenes are straightforward and naturalistic. The little group of a countryman driving a cow past a ruined temple in Munich is a good example of straightforward naturalism. The mythological reliefs are usually distinctly affected in style. The gesture with which Perseus receives Andromeda is like that of an exquisite handing a lady from her carriage. Bellerophon waters his horse with a nonchalant air. Daedalos and Icaros present a curious mixture of affectation and realism. But it may now be regarded as certain that the Spada reliefs are Augustan in date at the earliest, and the affectation may well be imported. This is, indeed, partially demonstrated by a comparison of the two copies of the Daedalos-Icaros group in the Villa Albani, of which one is Roman, the other probably late Hellenistic. At the same time it is remarkable that the figures of the mythological reliefs all show the long slender proportions of Lysippos. This at once suggests a Rhodian connexion. Mythological groups are favourites in Rhodes, and it is the one place where the Lysippic tradition certainly lasted. It is not a wholly hazardous suggestion to propose a Rhodian origin for the mythological, and an Alexandrian origin for the pastoral, reliefs. One might be tempted, therefore, to ascribe the most intimate and domestic scenes to Pergamon, but there is insufficient evidence for proof at present, though the reliefs deserve careful study with these possible divisions in mind.
In general we can only point out their fine naturalism and perfect execution. Their artists seem to have mastered all the problems of perspective and to deal with the third dimension as easily as with the other two. It is natural to notice some advance in freedom of style. The earlier reliefs, like the Telephos frieze, or the Dolon relief, are in less pronounced relief and with less carefully conceived perspective. Later reliefs like the so-called Menander relief show some of the figures in part detached from the background, while the perspective of a group is most subtly graded. We may compare the finest of them with the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery and their marvellous panels.
We may perhaps consider here the little we know of the art of Antioch, since it has certain points in common with that of Alexandria. The chief monument used in all discussion of Antiochene art is the statue of Antioch on the Orontes, made by Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippos. A small copy of this in the Vatican shows us a fine seated figure crowned with the turreted crown, who rests her foot on a little male figure with outstretched arms representing the stream of the Orontes. Unfortunately the copy is too small to give us much information about the artist, though he seems to have used the same idea for another statue of the Eurotas. We have, however, a figure of Aphrodite from Egypt , which shows a supporting Triton in an attitude indubitably connected with the figure of the Orontes. This is an Egyptian work, but it argues some artistic connexion between Alexandria and the Seleucid capital. Another link is given us by the statement that the Apollo at Daphne near Antioch was made by Bryaxis, the author of the Alexandrian Sarapis.
Ephesos, a strong place more or less at the meeting-point of three empires, has left us considerable remains of Hellenistic art. Her bronze athlete at Vienna belongs to a later development of the Scopaic school; her frieze of Erotes is more in the Alexandrian manner. Some beautiful bronzes, in particular a Herakles attacking a centaur, are in the mixed Lysippo-Scopaic manner. There are also traces of Praxitelean influence in her art.
These cosmopolitan collecting centres cannot tell us much of the methods of Hellenistic art. Our best resource is to examine more closely the works of certified origin. Ephesos is, however, important for its school of copyists. The marble copies of the Attalid dedications were perhaps made here, and Agasias, the author of the Borghese Fighter, was an Ephesian by birth, although a Rhodian by education.
THE RHODIAN SCHOOL
The school of Rhodes stands on a different footing from that of Pergamon or Alexandria. The latter were new foundations, or at least new societies, in which the Greek element was associated with much that was alien and exotic. The orgiastic wildness of Phrygia went far to influence the art of Pergamon, whether in its earlier sensuality or its later pageantry of exaggerated triumph. In Alexandria and in Antioch non-Greek races imported into Hellenic art the cynicism and the world-weariness of older and exhausted civilizations. But Rhodes was pure Greek and a living, growing, prosperous community without recollections of humiliation and defeat. Rhodes as a city had been born of the union of Lindos, Kameiros, and Ialysos at the end of the fifth century. The fourth century brought slow growth, but the successful defence against Demetrios Poliorcetes in its last decade opened a new chapter in Rhodian history. Henceforward Rhodes was mistress of an empire. She acquired possessions on the mainland; her fleet rode and controlled her neighbouring seas; her trade stretched out tentacles in all directions; and among the semi-barbarous Hellenistic kingdoms she alone carried proudly the torch of undefiled Hellenic tradition. Chares of Lindos, a pupil of Lysippos, headed the long roll of her sculptors; her painter, Protogenes, had but one rival in the Sikyonian Apelles. Thus from the first she boasted great artists, closely connected too with the school of Sikyon. Her Dorian sympathies naturally isolated her from the Attic school and from the mixed Praxitelean-Scopaic school of the Ionian mainland. Her Peloponnesian and Sikyonian connexions identified her at once with athletic art and with the school of Lysippos. Thus while Alexandria and Pergamon patronized marble sculpture, Rhodes now becomes the home of bronze casting. Her vast Colossus was matched by at least one hundred more statues of remarkable size, and the roll of her artists as recorded in inscriptions is noteworthy for its length. The great siege gave that impulse of idealism which is necessary for the growth of any artistic development, and the traditional friendship with the rising power of Rome helped her to preserve her prosperity and independence later than any of her neighbours. The last great work of Rhodian art, the Laocoon, is almost as late as the Empire, and the whole period of two hundred and fifty years between it and the Colossus is marked by an immense output of sculpture.
Eutychides of Sikyon, another pupil of Lysippos, is known to us only from his Antioch. This figure, even in its poor copy, is of great importance, since it is almost the only certified draped female figure of the Lysippic school. Our whole theory of Lysippic and early Rhodian drapery must, therefore, rest upon it. A comparison with the Herculaneum figure in Dresden will show at once a considerable resemblance in treatment, so much so, in fact, that it has caused the attribution of the Dresden figure to the Lysippic school. This cannot be allowed because of the greater resemblance to Attic grave-reliefs and the Mantinean basis, which demonstrates the origin of the type in the school of Praxiteles. But it is sufficient to show that the new scheme of the school of Praxiteles was adopted in the main by the pupils of Lysippos; their faithfulness to their teacher will incline us to the belief that Lysippos used it also. This type of drapery shows a tendency to an artificially effective or artistic arrangement rather than to complete simplicity of naturalism like the drapery of Praxiteles himself, but it is important to notice that it does not become purely artificial or stereotyped till much later, and that all the early examples preserve a considerable share of freer naturalism. The characteristic of the drapery is an opposition of folds in many differing directions, so as to counteract the uniformity of the older Pheidian type. The folds themselves are quite natural; it is only in their arrangement that we find the element of art.
The Antioch permits us to assume the tall figure swathed in a long thin cloak as the female type of the Lysippic school, and therefore of the early Rhodian school, while the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes give us the male type. The close connexion postulated rests on the fact that Chares of Lindos, the author of Rhodes' most famous statue, the great Colossus, was himself a member of the Sikyonian school and a pupil of the master. But the Colossus itself is unknown to us in any certain copy, and therefore we cannot speak with full knowledge of his art. Some statuettes in bronze in marked Lysippic style may well reproduce the statue, but we cannot feel the necessary certainty in their identification.
There is a group of athletic statues of the third century which carry out the Lysippic tradition to its logical conclusion, and which consequently we are practically bound to attribute to Rhodian artists. But until we have a definite copy of Chares' work we must argue backwards to the first Rhodian school, of which we have no direct information, from the later Rhodian school, of which we know a great deal. The Laocoon and the Farnese Bull are certified works of Rhodian art of the first century B.C., and they show us a type of male figure which is quite distinct from the types of Pergamene and Alexandrian art. We are, therefore, entitled to argue back to the Rhodian school of the third century, and to attribute to it such athletic sculpture as is clearly of the earlier date while offering distinct technical and stylistic resemblances to the later groups. The male figures of this later period differ from the Pergamene works, with which they are most easily compared, in certain well-defined points. The heads are smaller and rounder and the hair is rougher and less carefully arranged. The eyebrows have a tendency to form sharp angles with the nose instead of the broad straight curves of the Pergamene brows. This makes the bridge of the nose thinner and usually substitutes vertical forehead wrinkles for the swelling frontal sinus of Pergamene work. Except in cases of great strain the torso muscles are treated with more restraint, but the veins receive more careful attention, especially on the abdomen. In the back a more broken-up system of muscles replaces the great upright rolls on either side of the backbone, which mark Pergamene work. Finally, the proportions are slighter and more Lysippic.
These considerations apply most powerfully to two great statues of the Louvre, whose third-century date is almost certain: the Borghese Warrior and the Jason . The former statue is by Agasias of Ephesos, an artist whom we can date with some degree of certainty in the middle of the third century. The Jason comes so close to the Lysippic type of Poseidon on the one hand and to the Fighter of Agasias on the other, that the Lysippic-Rhodian origin of the two is fairly well established. The analogies of the Borghese Warrior with the Apoxyomenos have been often pointed out, but his resemblances to the Laocoon and the Farnese groups require an equal recognition. Both the Louvre statues show the influence of a later generation on the Lysippic type. While reproducing the general proportions, each develops Lysippic innovations to a further degree. Lysippos made a distinct advance in anatomical skill, but both these statues show a more exact scientific knowledge. While their torso muscles are less prominent, they reveal new details in abdomen, groin, and the inner side of the thighs, unknown to the earlier sculptor. They also develop much further the Lysippic substitution of an all-round figure for a merely frontal one. Each of them can be regarded effectively from any point of view, and neither has any real front. They, therefore, represent a distinct technical advance. But at the same time they show a decline in artistic feeling, for there is perhaps too much science about them. They belong to a school immensely interested in detail, and tending, therefore, to lose its grasp on the general treatment. The anatomical structure of the male form cannot be rendered more perfectly than in the statue of Agasias, so well known to all art students, but the statue affects us with a feeling of strain and discomfort from its want of unity and repose. All the athletic statues of the Rhodian school seem to be restless and unsatisfied. There is none of the calm repose about them that marked earlier Greek art. The desire to display newly acquired scientific knowledge invariably demands a strained and therefore disquieting motive. As we shall see when we come to examine the Laocoon later, the influence of the stage appears to be affecting sculpture. Poses are histrionic, and expression begins to depend upon grimaces and action rather than upon more subtle indications of feeling.
With the Borghese Fighter and the Jason we may class, perhaps, a work like the Actaeon torso in the Louvre, and also that much discussed and very beautiful work, the Subiaco Youth. This shows the same restraint in torso modelling which distinguished the Praying Boy and the Resting Hermes, but in the strain of its attitude it resembles rather the Fighter of Agasias, especially in the twist of the body above the waist, which Lysippos had originated and which his pupils tend to exaggerate. One of the disquieting features of the Borghese Fighter is that he implies the presence of another figure which is not there. He is a fighter without an opponent. The Subiaco Boy is in the same plight. His attitude can hardly be other than that of a suppliant touching chin and knee of his enemy in Greek fashion. His artistic defect is that he again is a suppliant without an enemy, part of a group without his counterpart. In their anxiety to study the human figure in all positions the Rhodian artists were apt to overlook the question of artistic unity.
Two fine bronzes in the Terme Museum may be attributed with some certainty to Rhodian artists, in view of the Rhodian monopoly of Hellenistic bronze casting. Both are Greek originals--the seated boxer and the hero resting on a lance . The latter is commonly called a portrait of some Hellenistic prince, but the absence of the royal tiara or any personal indications is significant rather of a heroic type. The face is strongly individual, but so is that of the Boxer, the Fighter of Agasias, and even the Jason. We have no reason to see a portrait in any of them, but personality is beginning to affect even ideal statues in the Hellenistic age. The hero with the lance is a fine, if rather histrionic, figure more or less following the Lysippic type of Alexander with the lance and showing a somewhat massive and emphatic rendering of a Lysippic type. He belongs to the later Rhodian school, into which exaggeration has crept, rather than to the more restrained art of the third century. The Boxer, on the other hand, brutal and coarse as his expression is, has no trace of muscular exaggeration, and is an earlier work. His broken nose, swollen ears, scarred face, and blood-bespattered hair show the unsparing realism of the artist. He is another instance of the all-round statue of the late Lysippic school, a masterpiece of technique, if a somewhat disagreeable work of art.
We must now turn to another very important side of Rhodian art--the delineation of female drapery. The followers of Lysippos favoured an austere style, and the nude female figure has no place in Rhodian art. But while the other sculptors of the Hellenistic world were modifying and to some extent vulgarizing the beautiful conceptions of Scopas and Praxiteles, the Rhodians were attacking the draped female figure as they inherited it from Praxiteles and Lysippos, and producing modifications just as interesting and important as those connected with the athletic statue.
We know that Philiskos of Rhodes was the author of a group of Muses which was much admired in Rome. It has been suggested that the new type of female drapery which appears on an altar from Halicarnassos and on the relief of the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, certainly a member of the Rhodian school, was his work. This new type of drapery is to be seen also in a number of statues of Muses, of which we have a collection from Miletos in the museum of Constantinople. It may be described most simply as an aggravation and exaggeration of the style of drapery introduced by the school of Praxiteles. The desire to get a series of folds at sharply contrasting angles leads to a very artificial arrangement of the dress, which produces an inharmonious effect. But there is a new development which deserves our attention. Transparent drapery had been elaborated by Alkamenes and the pupils of Pheidias, but always with the intention of displaying the body beneath it. The new drapery of the Muses is transparent with the desire to display other drapery beneath it. The earlier Greeks had used a thick mantle over a transparent chiton, but the Rhodian author of the new drapery used a transparent mantle over a clinging chiton. He thus doubles the subtlety of his technique, and provides himself with a series of new and intricate problems, just as the athletic sculptor does with his anatomical discoveries.
We now possess some evidence for the continuous study and development of female drapery at Rhodes parallel to the study and development of the male form. The Rhodian school is in fact the most industrious and the most scientific of all the Hellenistic art centres. In mastery of detail they are unapproachable, but they have ceased to care much for motive or idealism in their subjects. To such art both impressionism and romantic feeling are foreign. Rhodian art is very versatile and very straightforward, but its constant aspiration after the unusual renders it in the end monotonous.
The earlier and later periods of Rhodian art are separated by the quarrel with Rome and consequent loss of the land-empire in 167 B.C. This ended the real independence of Rhodes, and with it disappeared the inventive genius of her artists. She continued for another century to be the great and almost the sole centre of art production, for both Pergamon and Alexandria now lost all artistic importance, but she ceased to develop and originate. The works of her second period are brilliant in the extreme, but they are no longer vital and progressive.
It is significant that the best-known works of this period are great groups rather than single statues. We may notice the Laocoon group, the Farnese Bull, the 'Pasquino' of Ajax and Patroclos, the Scylla group, and the group of Odysseus with the Cyclops. Of these the earliest is perhaps the Farnese Bull, which we possess in an Antonine copy at Naples from the Baths of Caracalla. It represents the punishment of Dirce by Zethos and Amphion for her cruelty to their mother Antiope. The two heroes hold the bull, to whose horns they are about to tie the unfortunate Dirce. It was made by Apollonios and Tauriskos of Tralles, and brought from Rhodes to Rome by Asinius Pollio. The date can be fixed by a comparison of inscriptions to about the year 130 B.C. Tauriskos' son has signed a base at Magnesia about 100 B.C. Both Tauriskos and Apollonios were adopted by Menecrates, son of Menecrates, one of the artists of the Pergamon frieze. But in examining the group we must beware of the Roman additions and restorations, which include nearly all the landscape details together with the figure of Antiope and the mountain god. The head of Zethos is a portrait of Caracalla. The group has been adapted to act as a centre-piece for the great hall of the Baths of Caracalla, and consequently has been made square. Even in its original form, however, it must have been a good example of all-round sculpture. The figures are Lysippic, and the lower part of Dirce, which is the only antique part of her, shows more archaic drapery than usual. This is only what we might expect from an art which has passed its prime. Novelty of treatment is no longer a first essential. Tauriskos also made figures called Hermerotes. These must have been herm figures with an Eros head similar to a statue in the courtyard of the Conservatori Museum, and comparable with the Hermathena, which belonged to Cicero. Herms of all kinds became very popular in Greco-Roman art, and we see here in Rhodes perhaps the first development of the old archaistic Dionysos herms into more modern studies.
Another dramatic group similar to that of the Farnese Bull and the Laocoon was the lost group by Aristonides of Rhodes, showing Athamas in remorse for the murder of his son, Learchos. Pliny tells a foolish tale that the sculptor mixed iron with the copper in order to portray the blush of shame, a story told also about the Jocasta of Silanion.
A little figure of Odysseus in the Chiaramonti gallery of the Vatican holding out a bowl of wine to the Cyclops must be part of another mythological group of this period. The movement and action of the hero are typically Rhodian, and his face corresponds to the Rhodian type. The rest of the group is lost. The group of Scylla and the sailors of Odysseus is represented only by a much mutilated and fragmentary copy in Oxford, which gives us little information.
Of all the groups the best known and the most instructive is the latest of all, the Laocoon. In this marvellous group we see the full development of the effect of strained agony on the human form, and we see the mature form contrasted both with an active youth's body and with the semi-inanimate body of the younger boy. When we have removed the restorations and lowered the right arm of Laocoon nearer to his head, we get a perfect group-design unified by the terrible serpent-coils and by the central theme of agony. The torso muscles of Laocoon are fully developed and even exaggerated, though not to the same extent as those of the Pergamene frieze, but the boys' forms are simpler, and all reflect the basic principles of Rhodian art already enumerated. Pain is shown by the downward sloping eyebrows with sharp interior angles, by the half-closed eyes, wrinkled forehead, and parted lips. The hair is wild, and all the veins of the body stand out sharply. The twist above the waist occurs in all three bodies. It is interesting to notice that even in the Laocoon, the latest work of the most scientific school of Greek sculpture, anatomical accuracy is still lacking. The lower curve of the ribs above the abdomen follows a line impossible in nature, and the left thumb of the elder son is provided with three joints instead of the normal two. Neither the Laocoon nor any one of the other Rhodian groups is perfectly satisfactory to modern taste. There is too much strain, too much agony, too little relief or repose. Every inch of the group is illustrative of pain and passion. Our sense of sympathy is deadened by excessive emphasis and repetition. But in technical skill the group has never been surpassed.
A close parallel to the head of the Laocoon is found in the bearded centaur of the pair made by Aristeas and Papias of Aphrodisias . Copies of this statue existing in the Capitol and in the Louvre show the despair of the elderly victim of love in the guise of a centaur tormented by a little Eros on his back. The companion figure is young and delights in the persuasions of his rider. This group of rather obvious allegory belongs to the Antonine age, but the resemblance to the Laocoon proves a first-century original, which is interesting because it is one of the earliest examples of a corresponding pair of statues clearly designed for house decoration. The growth of 'cabinet pieces', as opposed to temple or national dedications, now develops into the whole mass of furniture sculpture in the shape of candelabra, table-legs, consoles, decorative herms, &c., which mark the imperial age.
THE MAINLAND SCHOOLS DURING THE HELLENISTIC AGE
While the full tide of artistic development was running in the new societies of Pergamon, Rhodes, and Alexandria, the Greek mainland became a backwater. The rise of the kingdoms meant the decline of the old autonomous city states. Athens in particular fell into the background on account of her uncompromising hostility to the power of Macedonia. In spite of some brief periods of revival, her destiny was for the future rarely in her own hands, and her political subordination seems to have reacted with great rapidity upon her artistic output. She remained for another century after the death of Alexander the home of philosophy, but her art began to revive only after the Roman conquest, in a new form, which will require later consideration. Here at least the Hellenistic age is a period of rapid decadence and decline.
The Peloponnese is in much the same position. The pupils of Lysippos found their best clients abroad, and left no successors of importance at home. The political loss of power was here intensified by a growing poverty. The new wealth which began to pour into Europe as the result of the conquest of Asia went either to Macedonia or to those states which had sent mercenaries to Alexander's army. The future prosperity of Greece was in the hands of Arcadia, Achaia, and Aetolia rather than Argos, Sparta, and Sikyon. The new states had few artistic traditions, and the old states had no means of gratifying theirs. The inevitable result was a great decline in artistic output as well as in artistic skill. Almost the only sphere left for sculpture was the erection of formal honorary statues to distinguished or wealthy individuals, a type of work which does not beget great art.
One of the most interesting Hellenistic works of the Attic school is the bronze figure from Anticythera, which is still the subject of much dispute. It is a typical piece of eclecticism. The pose and twist of the shoulder and upper part of the torso are Lysippic, while the head is a mixture of Praxiteles and Scopas. The result, as might be expected, is somewhat inharmonious. In shape and profile the head is mainly Praxitelean, and therefore on its discovery it was acclaimed as a Praxitelean original. But looking from the front we at once see the resemblance to the Scopaic Meleager type, with its broad head, slight chin, and fringe of short upright locks like little flames. The head, and indeed the whole statue, is not unlike the bronze athlete of Ephesos, which has the same hair and facial type, together with a similar rather heavy Lysippic body. This heaviness of the torso in both statues shows that the Lysippic ideal is not followed directly, but rather the Attic version of it as used in the Agias of Delphi.
Another Attico-Lysippic figure is preserved for us in a number of replicas, of which the two best known are the Hermes from Atalanta in Athens and the Hermes Richelieu in the Louvre. Here again Lysippic proportions are combined with a rather heavier Attic torso in a whole which lacks something of harmony and repose. The work has been referred back to a Lysippic original, but it seems more likely that it is an Attic adaptation of the eclectic school now springing into existence. The Attic grave reliefs give us good information about Attic art down to the end of the fourth century, but Demetrios of Phaleron prohibited them for sumptuary reasons in 309 B.C., and in future we have no such good guide to Attic art. Eclecticism is, however, pretty clear in the later examples which we do possess. The votive reliefs from the Asklepieion throw some light on the third century, but they are not on a sufficiently large scale to be very instructive.
The sculptor family best known to us from inscriptions is that of Eucheir and Euboulides. We know of at least two representatives of each name, Eucheir I about 220, Euboulides I about 190, Eucheir II about 160, and Euboulides II thirty years later. The first Euboulides made a statue of Chrysophis, the second Eucheir athletes and warriors, and a marble Hermes at Pheneos. The second Euboulides is more important, for he was the author of a great monument outside the Dipylon Gate, considerable fragments of which have been recovered.
These fragments are our main evidence for the art of Athens in the second half of the second century B.C., and they show us that the academic art of the second half of the third century has followed out its natural development. The figures of Victory and Athena , which have partially survived, are grandiose without being noble or effective. There is a distinct attempt to absorb some of the exaggerated idealism of the second Pergamene school; there is also an effort to recover some of the simplicity and grandeur of Pheidias; but the result is a staid and rather mechanical classicism, which is made only a little more obvious by the larger size of the figures. The Athena head, with its straightforward gaze, archaistic hair, large, wide-open eyes, and round, heavy chin is distinctly Pheidian; the Victory in rapid movement with head turned to the side is more affected by Pergamene art. Her drapery shows a curious combination of naturalism and formalism in the folds at the girdle; each individual set of folds is well studied from nature; but the repetition of a similar set right round the body is purely mechanical. The group is a good example of the limitations of the Attic artist at the end of his development. The next century sees a totally different activity.
In the Peloponnese we have a great gap after the pupils of Lysippos, a gap devoid of any evidence either literary or monumental. During the whole of the third century it would be difficult to point to any Peloponnesian art on a scale deserving of attention. But the second century opens with a name of some importance, Damophon of Messene. We are in the rare and fortunate position of possessing undoubted originals from his hand in the great group of Lycosura. These are practically our sole monumental evidence for the Hellenistic art of the Peloponnese. The date of Damophon is now established by inscriptions for the first half of the second century B.C., and a number of his works are more or less attested by coin-types. He had a considerable vogue in the last generation before the Roman conquest, and his leading position is evidenced by the commission he received to restore the Olympian Zeus. It may have been his hand which touched up and restored the corner figures of the west pediment of the temple.
The great group of Lycosura represented Demeter and Kore enthroned between standing figures of Artemis and a Titan Anytos. It survives in three heads and numerous fragments of limbs and drapery, and its conjectural restoration has been recently undertaken . The discovery of a coin representing the group on its reverse goes far to justify the proposed design.
The group is interesting from many points of view, but mainly from the flood of light which it throws on the methods of Peloponnesian sculpture at the very close of its development. It thus forms a complementary picture to the remains of the monument of Euboulides in Athens. Damophon, like Euboulides, underwent the influence of Pergamon. The colossal scale of his group and the wild hair of his giant Anytos demonstrate the influence of the altar frieze. Damophon also went back to Pheidias for inspiration. He must have absorbed many lessons from his work at Olympia. The seated group of his goddesses is reminiscent of the two figures next to 'Theseus' in the west pediment of the Parthenon. The simple wide-eyed grave expression of his Demeter head goes back to the fifth-century ideal, while his Artemis wears the melon-coiffure associated with the school of Praxiteles. The attitudes of Artemis and Anytos are Lysippic. Here we have every evidence of academic eclecticism. The same feature is borne out by three coins which reproduce the statues of Damophon. His Asklepios at Aigion gives us a fourth-century type. He copied the Laphria of Patras for Messene. His Herakles in the guise of an Idaean Dactyl at Megalopolis seems to have been a variant of the now fashionable herm figures and to copy a Hermerakles type known by numerous extant examples.
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