While Egyptian sculpture was losing its individuality, and Assyrian
was wearing itself out in excessive ornamentation, there was a new art
growing up in the isles and on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean.
The early centuries of its growth are hidden from our knowledge. The
remains are so scanty, so imperfect, that it is with difficulty that
we trace the influences which were molding the art, and the extent to
which it was taking hold of the people. Of this primitive period but
one single work of sculpture is preserved.
“At Mycenæ, once perhaps in the days of Homer (850-800? B. C.) the most
important city of Greece, there are sculptural works in the remains
of two lions over the entrance gate. The height of these is about ten
feet, and the width fifteen feet. The stone is a greenish limestone.
The holes show where the metal pins held the heads, long since decayed.
Fragments as they are, they show an Assyrian rather than an Egyptian
influence in the strong marking of the muscles and joints, softened
though it is by decay, and in the erect attitude, which denotes action,
such as is not seen in Egyptian art of this kind. Of this gate of the
lions, which has long been known as the most ancient work of early
Greek sculpture, it must be noticed that it is not in the round, but
only in high relief. And this is the case with all the earliest works,
just as it is with the Assyrian sculptures. They tend to show therefore
that the Greek sculptor had not yet learnt to model and carve in the
round in marble and stone.”
In the objects found by Cesnola in Cyprus, and consisting of statues
and other sculptures, incised gems, and metal work of the hammered-out
kind, the resemblance to the art of Assyria is remarkable. Three
hundred years later than the “gate of lions” are the reliefs discovered
at Xanthus in Lycia. “They belong to the Harpy monument—a pier-shaped
memorial, along the upper edge of which is a frieze ornamented in
relief.” The archaic is still visible in the figures. The drapery
falls in long straight folds, with zigzag edges. There is the stiff,
inevitable smile of the Egyptian statue. The figures are in motion, but
both feet are set flat on the ground. Though in profile the eyes are
shown in full. In spite of these primitive absurdities, and the fact
that the subjects represent foreign myths, the statues are Greek.
In the fifth century various art schools were founded. “In Argos lived
Argeladas (515-455 B. C.), famous for his bronze statues of gods and
Olympic victors, and still more famous for his three great pupils,
Phidias, Myron, and Polycleitus. In Sicyon there lived, at the same
time, Canachus, the founder of a vital and enduring school. He executed
the colossal statue of Apollo at Miletus, and was skilled not only
in casting bronze but in the use of gold and ivory and wood carving.
Ægina, then a commercial island as yet not subjected, was rendered
illustrious by the two masters Callon and Onatas, the latter especially
known by several groups of bronze statues and warlike scenes from
heroic legends. Lastly, Athens possessed among other artists Hegias,
the teacher of Phidias and Critius. But all of these old masters were
severe, hard, archaic in their treatment.”
But a period approaches when by a freer, happier treatment of their
work the way was led to the highest Athenian sculpture. We can but
mention the leading sculptors, Calamis of Athens, Pythagoras of
Rhegium, and, greatest of all, Myron of Athens. They do not belong
to the epoch of the finest Grecian art, but they were the immediate
forerunners.
“Now, for the first time in opposition to the barbarians, the
national Hellenic mind rose to the highest consciousness of noble
independence and dignity. Athens concentrated within herself, as in
a focus, the whole exuberance and many-sidedness of Greek life, and
glorified it into beautiful utility. The victory of the old time
over the new was effected by the power of Phidias, one of the most
wonderful artist minds of all times. He lived in the times of Athens’
greatest prosperity, and to him Pericles gave the task of executing
the magnificent works he had planned for adorning the city. Among
the famous statues which Phidias wrought in carrying out these plans
was that of Athene, the patron goddess of the Athenians. The booty
which had been taken at Salamis was set aside for this purpose, and
forty-four talents, equal to $589,875 of our money, was spent in
adorning the statue. The virgin goddess was standing erect; a golden
helmet covered her beautiful and earnest head; a coat of mail, with
the head of the Medusa carved in ivory concealed her bosom; and long,
flowing, golden drapery enveloped her whole figure—a statue of Niké,
six feet high, stood on the outstretched hand of the goddess. The
undraped parts were formed of ivory; the eyes of sparkling precious
stones; the drapery, hair, and weapons of gold. In it Phidias portrayed
for all ages the character of Minerva, the serious goddess of wisdom,
the mild protectress of Attica.”
Still more than in this statue the austere maidenliness of the goddess
was elevated into noble, intellectual beauty in a figure of Athene
placed on the Acropolis by the Lemnians; so much so that an old epigram
instituted a comparison with the Aphrodite of Praxiteles of Cnidus, and
calls Paris “a mere cow-driver for not giving the apple to Athene.”
The still more famous colossal statue by Phidias, the Zeus at Olympia
in Elis, was his last great work. It was made between B. C. 438, the
date of the consecration of the Parthenon statue, and B. C. 432, the
year of his death, at Elis.
This was a seated statue of ivory and gold, 55 feet high, including
the throne. Strabo remarks, that “if the god had risen he would have
carried away the roof,” and the height of the interior was about 55
feet; the temple being built on the model of the Parthenon at Athens,
which was 64 feet to the point of the pediment.
The statue was seen in its temple by Paulus Æmilius in the second
century B. C., who declared the god himself seemed present to him.
Epictetus says that “it was considered a misfortune for any one to
die without having seen the masterpiece of Phidias.” In the time of
Julian the Apostate (A. D. 361-363) “it continued to receive the homage
of Greece in spite of every kind of attack which the covert zeal of
Constantine had made against polytheism, its temples, and its idols.”
This is the last notice we possess giving authentic information of this
grand statue. Phidias is said to have executed many other statues:
thirteen in bronze from the booty of Marathon, consecrated at Delphi
under Cimon—statues of Apollo, Athene, and Miltiades, with those ten
heroes who had given their names to the ten Athenian tribes (Eponymi);
an Athene for the city of Pellene in gold and ivory; another for the
Platæans, of the spoils of Marathon, made of wood gilt, with the head,
feet, and hands of Pentelic marble. “These,” M. Rochette says, “may be
considered the productions of his youth.”
The great national work of the time, however, was the Parthenon, and
the ornamentation was entrusted to Phidias. Not that all the wonderful
statues were executed by him alone. He had his pupils and associates.
The most famous of these seems to have been Alcamenes, a versatile and
imaginative disciple of his master. After him were Agoracritus and
Pæonius. There were many others who assisted in the work. The outside
of the temple was ornamented with three classes of sculpture: (1) The
sculptures of the pediments, being independent statues resting on the
cornices. (2) The groups of the metopes, ninety-two in number. These
were in high relief. (3) The frieze around the upper border of the
cella of the Parthenon contained a representation in low relief of the
Panathenaic procession. All these classes of sculpture were in the
highest style of the art.
The influence of the sculptures of the Parthenon is seen in many
directions in the temple of Apollo at Phigalia, the temple of
Niké-Apteros on the Acropolis at Athens, at Halicarnassus, etc.
“The works which are known to have been executed by the sculptors
contemporary with Phidias, and by others who formed what is spoken of
as ‘the later Athenian school,’ did not approach the great examples of
the Parthenon. Sculpture then reached the highest point in the grandest
style, whether in the treatment of the statue in the round, or of
bas-relief as in the frieze, or alto-relievo as in the metopes. As to
the chryselephantine statues of Phidias, it may be concluded without
hesitation that though we are compelled to rely upon descriptions only,
they must have been works of the great master even more beautiful than
the marbles.”
At Argos during the time of Phidias, a somewhat younger school
flourished under the leadership of Polycleitus. “The aspiration of
Polycleitus was to depict the perfect beauty of the human form in calm
repose.” His Amazon and Juno represent best his style; so perfect are
all his works in their proportions that the invention of the canon has
been assigned to him.
In the works of the later Athenian school, at the head of which were
Scopas and Praxiteles, the sublime ideal of Greek art was no longer
sustained by any new creations that can be compared with those of
the Phidian school; no rivalry with those great masters seemed to
be attempted. The severe and grand was beyond the comprehension, or
probably uncongenial to the spirit of the age, which inclined toward
the poetic, the graceful, the sentimental and romantic. The whole range
of the beautiful myths found abundant illustration in forms entirely
different from the ancient archaic representations, and in these the
fancy of the sculptor was allowed the fullest and freest indulgence.
Nymphs, nereids, mænads, and bacchantes occupied the chisel of the
sculptor in every form of graceful beauty.
After this epoch, to which so many of the fine statues
belong—repetitions in marble of famous originals in bronze—Greek
sculpture took another phase in accordance with the social life and
the taste of the age, which inclined toward the feeling for display
that arose with the domination of the Macedonian power, brought to its
height by the conquests and ambition of Alexander the Great. Lysippus,
a self-taught sculptor of Sicyon, was the leading artist of his time.
He was evidently a student of nature and individual character, as he
was the first to become celebrated for his portraits, especially those
of Alexander. He departed from the severe and grand style, and in the
native conceit of all self-taught men sneered at the art of Polycleitus
in the well-known saying recorded of him, “Polycleitus made men as they
were, but I make them as they ought to be.” He seems to have been the
first great naturalistic sculptor.
Rhodes had unquestionable right to give her name to a school of
sculpture, both from the great antiquity of the origin of the culture
of the arts in the island, and from the number, more than one hundred,
of colossal statues in bronze. The Rhodian school is also distinguished
by those remarkable examples of sculpture in marble of large groups
of figures—the Toro Farnese and the Laocoon. In these works there is
the same feeling for display of artistic accomplishment that has been
noticed as characteristic of the Macedonian age, with that effort at
the pathetic, especially in the Laocoon, which belongs to the finer
style of the later Athenian school as displayed in the works of Scopas
and Praxiteles, in the Niobe figures and others.
At Pergamus, another school allied in style to that of Ephesus arose,
of which the chief sculptor was Pyromachus, who, according to Pliny,
flourished in the 120th Olympiad, B. C. 300-298. A statue of Æsculapius
by Pyromachus was a work of some note in the splendid temple at
Pergamus, and is to be seen on the coins of that city. It is also
conjectured that the well-known Dying Gladiator is a copy of a bronze
by Pyromachus. The vigorous naturalistic style of these statues,
surpassing anything of preceding schools in the effort at expression,
may be taken as characteristic of the school of Pergamus, then
completely under Roman influence, and destined to become more so. But
all question as to the nature of the sculptures was set at rest by the
discovery of many large works in high relief by the German expedition
at Pergamus in 1875. These are now in the Museum at Berlin. They are
of almost colossal proportions, representing, as Pliny described, the
wars of Attalus and the Battles with the Giants. The nude figure is
especially marked by the effort to display artistic ability as well
as great energy in the action. In these points there is observable a
connection with the well-known and very striking example of sculpture
of this order—the Fighting Gladiator, or more properly the Warrior of
Agasias, who, as is certain from the inscription on his work, was an
Ephesian.
The equally renowned statue of the Apollo Belvedere, finely conceived
and admirably modeled as it undoubtedly is, bears the stamp of artistic
display which removes it from the style of the great classic works of
sculpture.
The history of Roman sculpture is soon told. If it have any real
roots, they are to be traced in the ancient Etruscan; for all that was
really characteristic in it as art is associated with that style, in
that intense naturalism which became developed so strikingly in the
production of portrait statues and busts, and in those great monumental
works in bas-relief which are marked by the same strong feeling for
descriptive representation of the most direct and realistic kind, upon
their triumphal columns and arches.
As has already been stated, early Roman sculpture, if such it can be
called, was entirely the work of Etruscan artists, employed by the
wealth of Rome to afford the citizens that display of pomp in their
worship of the gods and the triumphs of their warriors which their
ambition demanded. All important works were made of colossal size. Some
of the early Roman (quasi Etruscan) statues spoken of by the historians
are a bronze colossus of Jupiter, an Etruscan bronze colossus of
Apollo, eighty feet high, in the Palatine Library of the temple of
Augustus. A portrait statue of an orator in the toga, and a chimæra,
both of bronze, are in the Florence Museum. Sculpture, from the love
of it as a means of expressing the beautiful in the ideal form of the
deities or the heroic and the pathetic of humanity, never existed as
a growth of Roman civilization. The inclination of the Roman mind was
toward social, municipal, and imperial system and ordering; in this
direction the Romans were inventors and improvers upon that which they
borrowed from the Greeks. But in art they began by hiring, and they
ended by debasing the work of the hired.
They took away the bronze statues of Greece as trophies of conquest,
covered them with gold, and set them up in the palaces and public
places of Rome. They subsidized the sculptors of Greece, who under
Roman influence had fallen away from their high traditions; they did
nothing for the sake of art, but simply manufactured, as it were,
copies and imitations of Greek statues for their own use. Happily we
have to be grateful for the fact, though we can not honor the motive.
Had it not been for this bestowal of their wealth in the gratification
of their taste for luxury and display, many of the renowned statues
of ancient Greek art would have been known only by the vague mention
of them by Pausanias and Pliny, or the early Christian writers of the
Church, or the poetic allusions of the Greek anthologists and the Latin
epigrammatists.
The Column of Trajan was the great work of Apollodorus, the favorite
architect of the emperor, dedicated A. D. 114. It is 10½ feet in
diameter and 127 feet high, made of thirty-four blocks of white marble,
twenty-three being in the shaft, nine in the base, which is finely
sculptured, and two in the capital and _torus_. The reliefs at the base
are smaller than those toward the top, being two feet high, increasing
to nearly four as they approach the summit; this was, of course, to
enable the more distant subjects to be seen equally well with the
others, a singular illustration of the intensely practical turn of
Roman art in its application. There are about 2,500 figures, not
counting horses, representing the battles and sieges of the Dacian war.
The column of M. Aurelius Antoninus, erected A. D. 174, is similar in
height, but the sculptures, although in higher relief, are not so good.
They represent the conquest of the Marcomans.
The Augustan age (B. C. 36-A. D. 14), favorable as it was to
literature, only contributed to the multiplying of copies of the Greek
statues, such as we see in so many instances, some of which are of
great excellence, and inestimable as reliable evidence of fine Greek
sculpture. These copies were sometimes varied by the sculptor in some
immaterial point of detail.
Nero (A. D. 54-68) is said to have adorned his Golden House with no
less than 500 statues, brought from Delphi. In the Baths of Titus,
still in existence (they were built on the ground of the house and
gardens of Mæcenas), many valuable statues have been discovered. The
Arch of Titus furnishes an excellent example of bas-relief of that
time, in it the golden candlestick and other spoils from the temple of
Jerusalem are shown.
Hadrian (A. D. 117-138) encouraged the reproduction of the Greek
statues, with great success as regards execution, for his famous villa
at Tivoli, and besides these are the statues of his favorite Antinous,
which are the most original works of the time. Hadrian’s imperial
and liberal promotion of sculpture, gave an immense impetus to the
production of statues of every form. All the towns of Greece which he
favored made bronze portrait statues of him, which were placed in the
temple of Jupiter Olympius at Athens, and the enclosure round more than
half a mile in extent was filled with its many statues.
The learned Varro speaks of Arcesilaus as the sculptor of Venus
Genetrix, in the forum of Cæsar, and of a beautiful marble group of
Cupids playing with a lioness, some leading her, others beating her
with their sandals, others offering her wine to drink from horns.
Under the Antonines arose the outrageous fashion of representing noble
Romans and their wives as deities, and this was carried so far that
the men are not unfrequently nude as if heroic. The bas-reliefs on the
arch of Septimus Severus at Rome, and that which goes by the name of
Constantine—though made chiefly of reliefs belonging to one raised in
honor of Trajan—show the poor condition of sculpture at that time. The
numerous sarcophagi, some made by Greek sculptors for the Roman market,
and others by those working at Rome, are other examples of the feeble
style of imitators and workmen actuated by no knowledge or feeling of
art. Some of these are still to be seen in the collections at Rome,
with mythological subjects, the heads being left unfinished, so that
the portraits of the family could be carved when required.
The rule of Constantine was, however, far more disastrous to art as the
seat of the Empire was removed to Byzantium. Most of the finest statues
accumulated in Rome were removed there only to be lost forever in the
plundering of wars and the fanatical rage of the Christian iconoclasts.
While destroying the statues of the gods, they may have spared those
which commemorated agonistic victors; but we may be sure that nearly
all the works in metal which the Christians spared were melted down by
the barbarous hordes of Gothic invaders, who under Alaric occupied the
Morea about A. D. 395.
With this glance at the complete decadence of art and the coming
darkness that preceded its revival, we approach the subject of
sculpture as connected with the rise of ecclesiastical religious art,
which is necessarily reserved for further consideration.