would bear only upon the development of these technical processes, and
would give but little information concerning the style of this period,
if it were not possible to compare their accounts with several ancient
monuments which by great good-fortune have been preserved to our own
time. But it is necessary here not to overlook one point which is
frequently lost sight of altogether--namely, the local differences
betrayed by works of one or the same epoch. Examples of archaic stone
sculpture are presented by European Greece, by the Hellenic colonies of
the East in Asia Minor, and by those of the West in Sicily, which show
the two latter provinces to have followed a somewhat different course of
artistic development, and even the works of the Peloponnesos early to
have betrayed considerable variations, in conception and in principle,
from those of the more northern tracts of the Continent. Among the
provincial monuments, the first to be noted, because the oldest known,
are the metope reliefs upon the middle temple of the Acropolis of
Selinous in Sicily. The city was founded about 628 B.C., and, though
this temple may not have been the first built in the new colony, it must
be considered as dating at least from the first half of the sixth
century. Among numerous fragments of the metope sculptures two tablets
have been preserved almost uninjured which are of the greatest value
from the plainness with which they express both the artistic advance and
the imperfections of this early age. It would be a mistake, however, to
see in them representatives of the sculptural style of Greece proper,
for they betray in many respects the peculiar influences of Sicilian
Doric. In as far as the artistic understanding of the works permitted,
they evince a fresh and sound naturalism, and a careful observation of
the living model. But this did not extend beyond the more independent
members; while arms and legs, hands and feet, are relatively excellent,
the body and head are disagreeably heavy, rude, and ill-proportioned.
This contrast is particularly noticeable in that of the two reliefs
which represent Heracles carrying upon his bow the two Kercopes. The
more successful modelling of the details of the limbs shows it to have
been the work of an abler artist than the other (_Fig._ 192), where
Perseus, in the presence of Athene, cuts off the head of Medusa. The
deity, with naïve helplessness, turns her right foot sideways, though
otherwise facing entirely towards the front; the insufficient depth
rendered it impossible otherwise to give the foot its full length, and
the artist was perhaps withheld from a more correct form by an
unconscious dependence upon the more familiar style of low relief. The
left leg of the Medusa appears, on account of the confining frame, too
short by half, and the little Pegasos stands upon long, kangaroo-like
hinder legs, in order that the body may come within reach of the arm of
Medusa. Yet the weakness of the transition from the front view of the
upper body to the profile of the legs is less striking than in the
Egyptian and Assyrian sculptures, and both Perseus and Heracles are
wholly free from that typical petrifaction which characterized the art
of the Nile and of the Tigris. In spite of the first impression made by
the monstrous and disproportioned figures, these works have, with all
their imperfections, the peculiar charm of earnest effort, which is the
guarantee of ultimate success.
[Illustration: Fig. 193.--Statues from Miletos. British Museum.]
The most ancient Hellenic sculptures of Asia Minor do not show the same
self-reliance and direct study of nature. There the influence of
Mesopotamia, Phœnicia, Cyprus, and even of Egypt was so strongly felt
that art could not remain wholly free from canonical tendencies, and did
not develop simply and directly from natural models. The sitting
colossal statues which flanked the sacred way from the port of Panormos
to the Temple of Apollo Didymaios near Miletos, and, according to the
characters of the inscriptions, date from about 540 B.C., show the
naturalistic elements of Greek work in the treatment of the bodies, and
especially in the garments, with their scanty but correct folds; though
it is not to be denied that the arrangement in rows like the avenues of
sphinxes, and the enthroned, Memnon-like position of the priests and
priestesses betray reminiscences of Egyptian conceptions,--while the
fulness of the bodies and the technical details of the seats are more
similar to the traditional forms of Assyria and Phœnicia. The Asiatic
influence is still more evident in the epistyle and metope reliefs of
the remarkable Doric temple at Assos, now in the Louvre; though the
rudeness of their forms may be in part owing to the loss of the stucco
coating with which the coarse and excessively hard stone was doubtless
overlayed and in which many of the finer details may have been executed.
A similarity to the beaten work of metal plate peculiar to Phœnicia
is easily recognizable, and reliefs analogous in style, and even in
subject, to the sculptures of Assos are offered by the Etruscan
bronze-work of a chariot found in Perugia, now in the Munich Glyptothek.
[Illustration: Fig. 194.--Apollo of Thera.]
[Illustration: Fig. 195.--Archaic Relief from Sparta.]
A number of sculptures found in various parts of European Greece are
wholly different from these provincial works. Chief among them are
entirely nude youthful figures standing in a stiff position, the arms
hanging close to the body, and the legs separated--the left being
generally a little advanced; the head, with receding brow, is slightly
inclined, and looks directly forward; the eyes are large and protruding;
the smiling mouth drawn outward at the corners; while the wig-like hair
falls low over the shoulders. They are commonly designated as statues of
Apollo, although the want of all attributes, such as were so universally
employed by primitive art for the figures of deities, and which were so
necessary for their characterization, makes this more than uncertain.
Moreover, according to Plutarch, a Delian statue of Apollo, the work of
Tectaios and Angelion, teachers of the Æginetan Callon, and consequently
of this period, showed the god with outstretched hands; a position which
was typical in early antiquity, and seems long to have been retained, as
in the Milesian Apollo of Canachos, and the small bronze figure in the
Louvre. The supposition appears plausible that these figures are those
of victors in the national games of Greece; such votive offerings are
known to have been carved of wood in the earliest times, but, after 560
B.C., they appear to have been of stone, like that of Arrhachion in
Phigalia, described by Pausanias (viii. 40). The Apollo of Thera, now in
Athens (_Fig._ 194), is one of the more ancient of these works; the soft
and yet not voluptuous forms of the body, the beauty of outline, united
with an evident uncertainty, do not denote a later phase of artistic
development than the hard sharpness and strict conventionalism of the
greater number of archaic statues. The beginning of this discipline is
shown by the Apollo of Tenea, now at Munich, in which there is but
little grace and artistic beauty, but all the more an earnest striving
after close correctness of modelling, which is more successfully
attained in the limbs than in the trunk. Of this epoch, and similar in
style, though approaching more nearly to the Apollo of Thera, are the
marble statues of Orchomenos, preserved only to the knees, and the
torsos of Megara and Naxos, now in Athens. The more ancient sculptures
found in Greece proper are less antique in style than the sculptures and
reliefs already mentioned, with the exception of some marble steles from
Sparta, the most important of which represents upon the one side the
meeting of Orestes and Iphigenia, upon the other the murder of
Clytaimnestra (_Fig._ 195). The rude, short figures are somewhat similar
to those in the metopes of the middle temple upon the Acropolis of
Selinous. This excessive heaviness and awkwardness appears almost
entirely overcome in the stele of Aristion, found in northern Attica,
and now in Athens. The low relief (_Fig._ 196), designated as the work
of Aristocles, represents a man armed as a hoplite, and is similar, in
many important respects, to the Apollo of Tenea, though a decided
advance beyond that work. The Attic relief of a woman mounting a
chariot, notwithstanding a primitive harshness of form, shows, in the
graceful drapery, the inclination of the head and the position of the
arms, as well as in the greater certainty of the drawing, qualities
which cannot be ascribed exclusively to the superior perception of the
inhabitants of Attica, but must be due, at least in part, to a later and
more advanced stage of development. With these works may be compared the
so-called Leucothea relief in the Villa Albani, which does not, indeed,
equal them in composition, but is superior in grace of bearing and
beauty of detail. Another sculpture represents the bringing of a child
to a female figure seated upon a throne, perhaps the dead mother, and is
similar in subject to the celebrated reliefs of the Monument of the
Harpies at Xanthos, now in the British Museum, where the Harpies bear
children or souls to the deities of the lower world. The former, by
greater fulness and softness, as also by less clearness and
understanding in the general treatment, seems to precede the latter in
point of time, dating from the period between the Milesian colossal
figures and the Attic reliefs described, that is to say, from 520 to 500
B.C.
[Illustration: Fig. 196.--Stele of Aristion, by Aristocles.]
The older metopes of Selinous, the statues of Miletos, the reliefs of
Assos, and even the so-called figures of Apollo from Thera, Naxos,
Orchomenos, and Tenea, betray great looseness and uncertainty of form;
like the productions of every period of experiment, they give no
evidence of systematical and accepted principles--the canonical
establishment of a certain degree of perfection. In the subsequent
period there was, in various cities, an earnest endeavor to make an end
to this want of training by thorough and academic discipline. These
efforts could not, in Greece, result in that typical lifelessness, that
faulty execution and mannerism, universal in Egypt and the despotic
lands of the East, which operated against all direct study of nature;
but, by the combination of individual observations and improvements,
they increased and purified the artistic appreciation, no longer
restricting it to details, to the _partial_, but directing it to the
_complete_. Athens was most active in this advance, as is evident from
several ancient works closely related to that of the woman mounting the
chariot. The progress is illustrated by the statue of Athene found upon
the northern side of the Athenian Acropolis. A strict treatment of
details, like the aigis, the folds of the garments, the hair, etc., is
united to a considerable understanding of the forms of the body and the
functions of the limbs, which are sharply and perhaps a little hardly
modelled; while the work has in great measure freed itself from the
exactions of conventional symmetry, so markedly exemplified by the
sitting statues of Miletos and the Apollo of Tenea. The figure of Hermes
bearing a calf, found in Athens, is a somewhat similar work; its head
and hair are hard even to ugliness, but decided ability is shown in the
formation of the back and hams, and in the truth to nature of the calf,
held by the legs and pressed close to the neck. The progress is not less
plain in the bronze statuette of Apollo in the Louvre, nearly one meter
high, with the Greek inscription “to Athene from the tithes;” provided,
indeed, that the period of its origin is certain, and the work does not
belong to the extensive group of archaistic imitations.
The reliefs from the beginning of the fifth century are similar in
character. That upon a marble fountain-drum from Corinth represents the
meeting of Heracles and Hebe; it still preserves the silhouette-like
outline, the small parallel folds and general ornamental style of the
drapery, and the stepping of both feet flatly upon the soles; while the
unschooled endeavor and evident embarrassment of the artist does not
give an unpleasing expression of awkwardness to the figures, which have
a certain dignity and grace, especially remarkable in the garments and
in the action of the extremities. Here is attained at last that strict
and completed style which has cast off all loose uncertainty, and has
adopted a conventional form for accessories in order to secure the
harmonious execution of the whole. This is also noticeable upon a relief
discovered in Thasos, now in the Louvre, which, when compared with the
before-mentioned Corinthian relief, and with the monument of the
Harpies, displays the influence of the neighboring coasts of northern
Asia Minor, together with a certain picturesqueness of conception
peculiar to northern Greece. A beautiful stele, found in Orchomenos, the
work of Alxenor, an artist from Naxos, instead of giving to the portrait
figure the stiff position of parade, formerly universal, represents it
with crossed legs, lazily leaning upon a gnarled stick. The archaic
meagreness is, however, still to be seen in the form of the hand, and in
the folds of the cloak (_Fig._ 197). The stele from the Borgia
collection, at present in Naples, resembles it in general style. All the
merits and defects of the period are to be seen also in a number of
terra-cotta reliefs from Melos, not to mention some small figures in
clay and bronze, for the most part superficially executed, the
clumsiness of which may be ascribed to the maker’s individual want of
ability.
[Illustration: Fig. 197.--Stele by Alxenor, found in Orchomenos.]
The growth of art in Asia Minor, Sicily, and Lower Italy, in so far as
these lands were Hellenic, does not appear to have kept equal pace with
that of Greece proper; yet the intercourse, during the last decades of
the sixth century, was so active that they could not remain far behind.
The most remarkable examples of the sculptures of this class, perhaps of
a little later date than the Attic works described, are the metope
reliefs from the Middle Temple of the Eastern Plateau at Selinous,
representing the gigantomachia, as preserved in scanty fragments.
Although the crudeness of outline and modelling in the bodies of the
fallen giants in many respects recalls the older metopes of the
corresponding temple of the acropolis, the draperies of the goddesses,
on the other hand, show a skill exceeding in truth and beauty many of
the archaic works of Greece itself. The one remaining head of a giant,
wounded and outstretched in death (_Fig._ 198), shows, in spite of the
antique hardness in the form of the face and treatment of the hair, an
expression which could have resulted only from the intelligent study of
nature. A relief from Aricia, now in Palma, upon the island of Mallorca,
representing the murder of Ægisthos by Orestes, is known only through
insufficient representations; it shows weakness in composition and
inequality in rendering, the garments being sensibly inferior to the
treatment of the nude.
[Illustration: Fig. 198.--Head from a Metope of the Middle Temple upon
the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.]
Before mentioning by name those artists who carried art beyond this
stage of development, another class of monuments, numerically very
important, should be considered. It is well known that in all ages
antiquity has had a certain charm, either as appearing strange and
interesting in comparison with existing circumstances, or from religious
associations. When a devotional figure, with which many legends have
become associated, as is the case to-day with the altar-pieces of our
churches, was particularly reverenced on account of its antiquity, there
was a desire to preserve its primitive type, even from recognized
improvements. Hence arose an imitation of the original work, called
_archaistic_ in contradistinction from the _archaic_, or really old.
This imitative style became fashionable in later times; while an amateur
with the means of the Emperor Augustus was able to acquire an original
Boupalos or Athenis, other lovers of the antique were obliged to content
themselves with copies, or with works conventionalized after the manner
of the early masters. These products are not always to be distinguished
from the truly archaic, as is also the case with some modern imitations;
but usually some conventional, technical, or circumstantial oversight or
anachronism furnishes an easy criterion. There can be no doubt, for
example, concerning the age of a work of sculpture in which a Roman
Corinthian temple stands in the background, as upon a well-known relief
representing Victory filling a cup for Apollo Kitharoidos, who is
followed by Artemis and Leto. In other cases the head, hands, or
feet,--the expression or gesture,--or the step, which in ancient works
characteristically rests upon both soles,--betray a much later period
than the hard or regular folds of the drapery, as is the case with the
Artemis at Naples. (_Fig._ 199.) Sometimes the accessories are of a
later style, as in the ten scenes from the Gigantomachia upon the border
of the garment of Athene in Dresden; or, finally, the drapery upon one
figure of a group is strictly antique, while that of the others is free,
as upon a tripod of the same museum,--not to mention other less
important inconsistencies.
[Illustration: Fig. 199.--Archaistic Artemis from Pompeii.]
[Illustration: Fig. 200.--Central Figures of the Western Gable, Temple
of Athene upon Ægina.]
[Illustration: Fig. 201.--Harmodios and Aristogeiton. (Copies in
Naples.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 202.--Apollo after Canachos. (British Museum.)]