art at Pergamon, is the characteristic following-out of ethnographical
differences. Previously, when artists would distinguish barbarians, they
were content to make the nationality clear by costume and accessories;
but this could not suffice for Lysippos, who had carried individual
characterization to such a height in his portrait-statues, and who
probably, in his group of the battle upon the Granicos, illustrated the
peculiarities of the Persian race. In groups of portrait-statues it was
necessary to treat the action with absolute truthfulness, thus leading
the way to historic art. This is perfected in the monument in question,
the ideal battle scene being based upon real details; it was not merely
a strife among men, but Greeks and Celts stood opposed, each nation with
its marked features and peculiarities, the barbarians distinguished not
outwardly alone, but by their natural wildness.
This is evident from a number of figures of the Athenian votive offering
of Attalos, still preserved; our knowledge of their connection with the
Dying Gladiator and the school of Pergamon is due to Brunn. According to
Pausanias, this votive offering consisted of figures half the size of
life, in four groups, showing the gigantomachia, the combat of the
Amazons, the battle of Marathon, and the victory of Attalos. Figures
exist from them all; from the first, a giant, dead and outstretched, is
in the museum at Naples, as also one of the second, a fallen Amazon;
from the third, a dead body clad in breeches, and two nude Persians
kneeling, are in Naples, the Vatican, and in the possession of Signor
Castellani. From the fourth, a kneeling figure, at Paris, and one
kneeling and one falling backward, at Venice, are unmistakable Gauls;
while a sitting figure, wounded, also at Venice, and a youthful one,
dead, at Naples, are probably also of that race. Judging from these
remains, the composition must have included numerous figures, as the
five existing Gauls--perhaps also several more--bespeak a corresponding
number at Pergamon, and forty is the lowest that can be reckoned for the
whole. Their position was probably upon the steps of the monument, which
possibly bore the statue of the founder. It must have stood near the
wall of the Acropolis, since it has been said that a figure from the
gigantomachia was thrown by a storm into the theatre which stood at the
foot of this fortress. That only the conquered are found among the
pieces preserved seems to be an evidence that these remnants are from
the original rather than from any copy, because, aside from the
improbability that so extensive a work would have been copied in later
times, the effect of the storm suggests the thought that the erect
statues of the victors would have been less likely to last through so
many centuries than the lying and cowering figures, not so easily
injured on account of their closer connection with the base.
Notwithstanding their relation in style to the Capitoline statue and to
the group in the Ludovisi Villa, these are distinctly inferior and
harder. Brunn is probably right in his supposition that they are the
work of scholars, and a contemporaneous reproduction from the studio of
that master, who himself executed the monument at Pergamon, the figures
of which ranked in merit with the Dying Gladiator. Many deficiencies may
be accounted for by its reduction to half life-size; its repetition at
this scale, for the Athenian votive offering, appearing to have
satisfied the king.
The work most nearly related to this, also in marble, and perfectly
similar in conception, is a figure of the Marsyas group, the celebrated
Knife-sharpener in the Uffizi at Florence. This is also a representative
of barbarism, probably a Scythian, the others having been Gauls; but,
artistically, this makes no difference. No originals remain of the other
figures in the group, of which the barbarian, cowering upon the ground
and sharpening the knife for the flaying of Marsyas, probably formed no
very important part. Another aim, the careful anatomical treatment of
the body, is ostentatiously displayed in the copies of this work now in
Berlin and Florence. The group suggests another locality, and forms a
connecting medium between those two most important centres of art in
that period, Pergamon and Rhodes.
Among the few republics of the time, the island of Rhodes was able to
rival the brilliant courts of kings, in regard to artistic treasures, by
its wealth of commerce and its political neutrality--the latter being
rendered possible, as nowhere else, by its situation and importance.
That the influence of Lysippos prevailed there is clear from the fact
that, after this master had sent thither his Phoibos upon the quadriga,
the Rhodian Chares went to learn of him, and afterwards executed for his
native city the above-mentioned colossus. This was followed in the same
place by a hundred other colossal figures, which were probably related,
in point of style, to the works of Lysippos. The statement of Pliny that
each, singly, would have sufficed to make the place of its exposition
famous is hardly intelligible. Numerous names of artists, mostly of
Rhodes, found partly in inscriptions upon the bases, and partly
mentioned by Pliny, might here be mentioned.
The multiplied productions of colossal works, however, would not suffice
to give a very favorable idea of the state of art in Rhodes, were it not
for the preservation of two examples, prominent among many, which were
famous even in antiquity. These were the group of the Laocoon, in the
Vatican, and the so-called Farnese Bull, in Naples. The first (_Fig._
237), which Pliny, with extravagant praise, calls the work of three
Rhodians, Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros, was found in 1506--not
in one piece, as he describes it, but in six--among the ruins of the
house of Titus, in whose palace Pliny says it was placed. It represents
the priest Laocoon, who sinned at the altar through love, and whom
Apollo chastised by means of two serpents. This expiation became tragic,
from its having taken place at the moment when Laocoon had resolved to
save his native city, Troy; and also from the suffering of the children,
innocent, though born in sin. The serpents have encircled the three
figures; the youngest is falling from the deadly sting; the father,
sinking upon the altar after a desperate defence, is no longer able to
protect himself; while the elder son, not yet threatened with instant
death, but hopelessly entangled in the coils of the serpent, turns upon
his father a look of despairing horror.
[Illustration: Fig. 237.--Group of Laocoon and his Sons, by Agesandros,
Athanodoros, and Polydoros. (Vatican.)]
This grand work, though from Pliny down to later times esteemed beyond
its real merit, still makes evident to us peculiarities in the art of
Rhodes which, in many respects, render it of independent value. We find
in it a choice of subject new in sculpture, the technical and artistic
difficulties of which appear almost insurmountable, so that it could
only be treated by ability well trained and long experienced. It gave
opportunity to surpass all existing productions in its display of
artistic technical superiority. When the body of the Laocoon is compared
with the type of Heracles, it cannot be doubted that the canon of
Lysippos was followed; but the forms, which with him were developed from
the living model, in this, as in the Marsyas of Pergamon, are taken from
anatomical studies, and are wanting in fulness of life: the overdetailed
muscles are too studied, distinct, and separated; they are marble, and
not flesh. The composition would, in real life, be impracticable; the
action is visibly so ordered that it never could be possible, and is
throughout developed with an aim towards the greatest effect. But this
effect is by no means merely formal, limited to the restless and
disquieting play of the lines of the limbs and trunks, and of the coils
of the serpents. It is in the highest degree pathetic. Thus this element
of the school of Praxiteles existed in this work, both the leading
characteristics of that master being here displayed with an excessive
ostentation. The pathos confronts us too exclusively, not modified by
any ethic principle. The work does not, therefore, have the tragic power
which lies in the descriptions of Sophocles, because, in the group, only
the effect is to be seen; we have no hint as to the cause. The pathetic
blends far more with the pathological event than with the ethical. The
mastery of rendering, the composition, the effect--everything is
wonderful; but it all lies in the realm of display: our admiration is
given to the artist rather than to the work. It cannot be denied that
this effective treatment was the dominant feature in the art of Rhodes;
but it set technical mastery in the foreground, to the neglect of
absolute and intrinsic merit.
[Illustration: Fig. 238.--The Farnese Bull of Apollonios and Tauriscos.
(In Naples.)]
This applies equally to the second great work, the so-called Farnese
Bull (_Fig._ 238), the creation of two artists from Tralles, Apollonios
and Tauriscos, who may have worked in Rhodes, as, according to Pliny,
the group was to be seen there before it was brought to Rome under
Augustus. This large group was found in the Baths of Caracalla soon
after the discovery of the Laocoon, and was transported to Naples, where
it now stands in the Museo Nazionale. The scene is probably taken from
the _Antiope_, a tragedy of Euripides, and an understanding of the story
is necessary to its comprehension. Antiope was the daughter of King
Nycteus of Thebes; he being angry with her because of the love of Zeus,
and incredulous as to the cause of her pregnancy, she fled to Mount
Kithairon, where she bore the twins Zethos and Amphion. Having given
these to the care of a shepherd, she was received by King Epopeus of
Sikyon; but Lycos, the brother and successor of Nycteus, carried on the
hateful persecution, even to the extent of making war against her
protector. Sikyon was destroyed, and Antiope returned as a slave to
Thebes, where the ill-treatment of Dirke, wife of Lycos, obliged her to
fly once more to the mountains. There, at a festival of Bacchus, she was
found again by her persecutor, and, for her flight, was given the
terrible punishment of being dragged to death by a bull. Zethos and
Amphion were ready to execute the command when a recognition took place,
and a just vengeance brought the fate intended for Antiope upon the head
of Dirke. This moment forms the imposing scene of the group. The raging
bull is only with difficulty held by the avenging sons; Dirke, a most
beautiful woman, praying in vain for grace, clasps the knee of one while
the other is ready to throw around her the noose by which she is to be
dragged over the rough ground of Kithairon. The passion of the avenging
sons, and the fear of Dirke, make the work highly pathetic and
impressive; but it is not so really tragic as the Laocoon, because the
motive of the evidently brutal deed, though not entirely neglected, as
in the former, is still not entirely comprehensible. Antiope, the
heroine of the tragedy, is indeed present. But she is not brought into
the action, and stands, in fact, behind the principal characters. She is
therefore hardly more than a lay figure, expressing nothing. It might
perhaps have been better to omit Antiope altogether, and to leave the
action without any motive at all. The figure has, however, an interest
of its own, being in an excellent state of preservation, while the
others have suffered by restoration and by retouching. The composition,
with its numerous figures, admirably executed, has a picturesque effect
which is somewhat new in the history of Greek sculpture. This is
enhanced by the accessories of the story, the rocky ground, and many
local details symbolical of the occasion. Besides a fine large dog,
really belonging to the group, there are a chaplet and a basket, a
disproportionately small boy ornamented with a wreath, and, still more
inferior in size, two lions seizing a bull and a horse. There are also
two boars coming out from a grotto, a lioness, a stag, a hind, a ram, an
eagle with a snake, and a falcon over a dead bird; even turtles,
snakes, and snails are represented. The mastery over the technical and
artistic difficulties in this work is scarcely less admirable than in
the Laocoon, and it gives the same impression of a successful piece of
bravura, astonishing and quite fascinating for its novelty, boldness,
and versatile power. The age, indeed, satiated with the best products of
various schools, demanded the stimulus of an excessive appeal to
superficial sources of interest. The group of the Marsyas is attributed
to artists of Pergamon, and the Wrestlers in the Uffizi at Florence
(_Fig._ 239) may, with greater certainty, be ascribed to those of
Rhodes.
[Illustration: Fig. 239.--The Wrestlers. (In the Uffizi, Florence.)]
[Illustration: Fig. 240.--Apollo Belvedere. (In the Vatican.)]
Before we pass to the last active period of Hellenic art, one other
work, preserved from this age, the Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican
(_Fig._ 240), still claims our consideration. Though without the name of
the artist, or of the place of its origin, and not, perhaps, to be
classed directly with the greatest productions of Pergamon and Rhodes,
it is yet not unworthy to rank by their side. It is, like the Laocoon,
one of the best-known statues among the existing treasures of
antiquity, and scarcely needs a minute description. The splendid
triumphant head looking into the distance, the slender figure, as fine
in modelling as it is noble, the pleasing grace of the light step,
assure for it an admiration, the more universal as these beauties--the
combined result of the schools of Lysippos and of Praxiteles--are just
those which are the most generally recognized. It is not an original
work, in the full sense of the word, but an early Roman copy from the
bronze, and seems to bear a closer relation to it than does the lately
discovered head which is now in the museum at Basle. This latter has
lost the characteristic features of the bronze style, and from the
greater freedom of its treatment may be called a _translation_ into
marble, in distinction from the _copy_ in the Vatican. Another
reproduction of this work recently made known by Stephani, a bronze
statuette in the Strogonoff collection, at St. Petersburg, has given an
additional explanation of the action in which the god was represented.
In the marble the left hand was wanting, and in the restoration this was
supplied with a bow; but in the Strogonoff Apollo remains are still to
be seen of the ægis, held in the hand, with which the deity drove back
the Greeks, as described by Homer, Il. xv. 306. If the far-shooter be
thus changed into the ægis-bearer, the shaking of the ægis symbolizing
the storm, a plain reference may be found to the original motive of the
work. When the Gauls threatened Delphi in 279 B.C., the defence of the
Greeks was effectively assisted by a terrible storm, which threw the
barbarians into a fearful panic, and which was regarded by the Greeks as
caused by the personal intervention of Apollo, Athene, and Artemis. This
might well have had an effect upon art similar to that of the victory of
Attalos over the Gauls in Asia Minor. The Ætolians, indeed, proposed to
erect at Delphi a votive offering, with figures of field-officers and of
the three gods, while a statue of Apollo was erected in Patrae from a
similar reason. In view of this, Overbeck has ventured to combine the
Apollo Belvedere, the Artemis of Versailles (_Fig._ 241), and the
striding Athene of the Capitoline Museum into one group, to which ideal
union the unsimilarity of the workmanship, and even of the scale of the
three statues, is not so much opposed--since these are all copies that
have come down to us from different times--as is the movement of the
Apollo, the middle figure, towards the right. This difficulty might be
met by changing the positions, so that Athene should stand at the right
and Artemis at the left, whereby the action of the figures might be
from, rather than towards, each other, Artemis being turned decidedly
more towards the front. If, however, this work originated in consequence
of the victory in 279 B.C., it shows that a generation before the time
of Attalos, at least in Greece proper, although attention had already
been devoted to momentary action, art nevertheless still stood upon an
ideal height, and could still delineate gods worthy of admiration.
[Illustration: Fig. 241.--Artemis of Versailles.]
These artistic efforts do not, on the whole, refute the opinion of Pliny
that art ceased from the 121st to the 156th Olympiad--that is, from 300
to 150 B.C. The chief localities of its activity, Pergamon and Rhodes,
may be considered only as asylums found by the higher sculpture after it
had lost all foothold in its native home. But when he says it took a new
flight at the close of that period, we must acknowledge that the result
was not of that kind which could charm us as it did the Roman narrator.
As Brunn remarks, the date of Pliny agrees with that period when
Hellenic art attained a decided mastery in Rome. Scarcely any evidences
of the monumental art of Greece were to be recognized in Rome before the
conquest of Syracuse in 212 B.C. After this time the Roman triumphs
brought forth, one after another, an almost oppressive number of
productions, so that the art of the Greek colonies, and of Greece
itself, overflowed Rome in a broad stream. Not to mention the plundering
of Capua, Tarention, and numerous Grecian cities in Lower Italy, we have
an example in the triumphs of Quintius Flaminius, the conqueror of
Kynoskephalæ, 197 B.C., when the transportation of the statues lasted
an entire day. The booty taken from Western Greece by M. Fulvius
Nobilior, in 189 B.C., also contained not less than five hundred and
fifteen statues. These extensive plunderings were at least equalled by
the triumphs of L. Cornelius Scipio, the victor over Antiochos; of
Æmilius Paulus, conqueror of Perseus; of Metellus Macedonicus, and of
the destroyer of Corinth, Mummius, who has become proverbial for his
barbarous robberies. It was not strange that at last a living art
followed the triumphal chariot of Roman victories. Metellus employed
many Grecian artists in the erection and ornamentation of his new
buildings in Rome.
The scene of artistic industry thus became changed, and Rome, a foreign
city, became the central point--first of possession, and afterwards of
artistic activity. It might therefore be questioned whether what follows
were not better suited to the chapter upon Rome; but it must be
considered that the Romans were, from our present point of view, only
wealthy collectors and patrons of art, and that the artists employed
were still Grecian, and of the Hellenic school. This was not altered by
their working in Rome, or even by their learning from the numberless
productions accumulated there.
Roman grandeur was long contented with artistic booty for the
ornamenting of its forums, temples, and public buildings; the immense
wealth of the empire and proconsulate giving opportunity for procuring
celebrated works by force, by purchase, or as honorary gifts. This
brought forth dilettanteism, which led to the study of art, and to a
zeal for collecting which made every new acquisition an additional
incentive to covetousness. Study choked that impulse which, in a
degenerate way, had endeavored to outdo what had been done by masters of
the best period, and, accounting their method to be exclusively good,
turned art back by a sort of reaction upon those earlier paths. The
passion for collecting was not limited to the works ready at hand, but
would have restorations and imitations by contemporary artists, made in
the spirit of the originals. It could not have been otherwise than that
art, after having exhausted the originals, and attained its aims in all
directions, should react upon itself; but doubtless the circumstances of
Rome had an essential influence upon the manner in which this took
place, and greatly furthered this renaissance--to use a somewhat
unsuitable term which, in its restricted sense, has been adopted for the
far more original awakening of art at the close of the Middle Ages.
[Illustration: Fig. 242.--Borghese Gladiator of Agasias. (In the
Louvre.)]
In the desire to enliven the different phases of artistic development,
it was natural not to return to first principles, but rather to take
those creations which lay near at hand, and try to find in them the way
to improvement. The period under consideration, up to the commencement
of the empire, offers examples of every stage of development, the dates
of which can only here and there be given; but it seems that the way for
an Hellenic renaissance was, during this period, partially opened.
Agasias of Ephesos appears as successor to the master of the Laocoon and
of the Farnese Bull. The celebrated Borghese Gladiator in the Louvre,
which represents a warrior in fictitious battle with a horseman, may be
referred to the school of Rhodes. (_Fig._ 242.) As the statue did not
belong to a group, but was independent, we see in it nothing but a show
figure, in which the artist only sought for a position where he might
outdo all that had gone before, and give opportunity to parade his
technical mastery and his anatomical knowledge. That the work should be
placed in this time, and not in the best period of the Rhodian school,
is plain from the later character of the writing in the artist’s
inscription, from the inferior understanding of the mutual relations of
the muscles, and particularly from the insignificance of the idea, and
the entire lack of the pathetic, all which elements lent to the works of
Rhodes an especial value.
As examples from Rhodes and Pergamon not only lay near at hand for the
artists of Asia Minor, but were germane to their civilization, so the
numerous Attic masters of this period looked to the time of perfection
in Attica and Sikyon. The tenets of the school of Lysippos still held
sway there, and what splendid fruit it bore, even at this time,
notwithstanding the retrogression from its earlier overvalued merit, is
shown by the much admired torso, now in the Vatican Belvedere, by
Apollonios, son of Nestor of Athens. (_Fig._ 243.) This must certainly
have been a sitting Heracles, a motive repeatedly treated by Lysippos,
though no restoration of it has yet been decidedly successful. The most
probable is the latest by Petersen, which represents him as playing the
kithara. The somewhat later statue by Glycon of Athens, the Heracles,
who stands leaning upon his club (_Fig._ 231), though approaching
somewhat in conception to a work of Lysippos, is far inferior. With this
may be mentioned a still poorer repetition, the Heracles of the Pitti
Palace in Florence, through a false inscription ascribed to Lysippos.
[Illustration: Fig. 243.--Belvedere Torso, by Apollonios. (In the
Vatican.)]
Besides Apollonios, who was distinguished also by his youthful satyr and
an Apollo, which are too little known for a more minute description, the
school of Scopas and Praxiteles was followed by the son of Apollodoros
of Athens, Cleomenes, the sculptor of the Venus de’ Medici. When
compared with the divine figure of the Venus of Melos, though pleasing,
it appears degenerate. The godlike beauty which we impute to the Cnidian
Aphrodite, and find in the Venus of Melos, is lost by the continual
emphasis of sensuous effects, notwithstanding all the mastery and
delicate feeling for beauty. With the exception of the Braschi Venus at
Munich and the Venus of the Capitol, which are more nearly related to
that of Cnidos, nearly all the nude figures of Venus in the various
museums belong to the same circle and stage of development, even when
they betray later work. The masters by no means appear to have been mere
copyists; but the works of Praxiteles were altered, to suit the taste of
the times, by artists in whom individuality was not quite extinct.