LATER GREEK ARCHITECTS.
The first architect as well as artist of decided merit who arose to
historic distinction at the beginning of the later Attic school, or
that which followed immediately upon the school of Phidias, and one
of the first to treat the Corinthian idea, then flowering into favor
with originality and artistic skill, was the deserving and accomplished
Scopas. Reference has already been made to this artist in connection
with the temple of Diana at Ephesus, for which, it is said, he
furnished the most beautiful of all the numerous columns with which
that temple was enriched. This statement is made without prejudice
to the great Praxiteles, who was contemporaneous with Scopas, and
who excelled him as a statuary, if he did not compete with him as an
architect.
A mistake of Pliny, which assigned Scopas to an earlier age, has
finally been corrected, and it has been settled that the period when
he exercised his art was between the years 395 and 350 B.C. Scopas
was a native of Paros, a subject island of Athens, and sprung from a
family which for several generations before his advent into the world
had practised the plastic arts. His descendants also walked in the same
artistic paths of life for many generations. Like Polycletus, with whom
he is most favorably compared, the architectural side of his career was
greatly eclipsed by that which displayed his genius as a sculptor.
His statues were numerous, and fortunately many of them still exist
scattered in various European museums and galleries. Among such of
his works considered the most interesting is the well-known series
of figures representing the destruction of the sons and daughters
of Niobe. In the time of Pliny these statues stood in the temple of
Apollo Socianus at Rome, and it was then a question whether they were
the works of Scopas or Praxiteles. In fact, many of the former’s
finest efforts have been attributed to the latter artist. Of this
group Schlegel says: “In the group of Niobe there is the most perfect
expression of terror and pity. The upturned looks of the mother, and
mouth half open in supplication, seem to accuse the invisible wrath of
Heaven. The daughter clinging in the agonies of death to the bosom of
her mother, in her infantile innocence can have no other fear than for
herself; the innate impulse of self-preservation was never represented
in a manner more tender or affecting. Can there on the other hand
be exhibited to the senses a more beautiful image of self-devoting,
heroic magnanimity than Niobe, as she bends her body forward that,
if possible, she may alone received the destructive bolt? Pride and
repugnance are melted down in the most ardent maternal love. The more
than earthly dignity of the features is the less disfigured by pain, as
from the quick repetition of the shocks she appears, as in the fable,
to have become insensible and motionless. Before this figure, twice
transformed into stone, and yet so inimitably animated—before this line
of demarcation of all human suffering the most callous beholder is
dissolved in tears.”
Another highly esteemed work of Scopas, which Pliny says stood in the
shrine of Cneius Domitius in the Flaminian circus in Rome, represented
Achilles conducted to the island of Leuce by the divinities of the sea.
It consisted of figures of Neptune, Thetis and Achilles surrounded
by Nereids sitting on dolphins and other large fish, and attended by
Tritons and sea monsters. In the opinion of Pliny, these figures alone
would have been sufficient to have immortalized the artist, even if
they had cost the labor of his entire life.
His statues of Venus, are, after all, perhaps the most remarkable of
his works in sculpture. One of these statues, if not the original,
is supposed to have been the prototype of one of the most celebrated
and beautiful portrayals of that charming deity in the world to-day.
Another to which Pliny gives particular prominence was that in which
the goddess is presented nude and which was found in the temple of
Brutus Callaicus in Rome. This statue, he adds, “would have conferred
renown upon any other city, but at Rome the immense number of works
of art and the bustle of daily life in a great city distracted the
attention of men.” It is probably this work of art, which is thought
by some to have been superior to that by Praxiteles, which, with some
modifications, is credited with being the model after which Cleomenes
fashioned the celebrated Venus de Medicis. Pausanias and Pliny mention
also other portrayals of Venus by Scopas, but it is left to Waagen
and some other critics to ascribe the celebrated statue of Aphrodite,
in the Louvre in Paris, and known as the Venus de Milo, to this great
sculptor and architect.
It is foreign to the purpose, however, to devote too much space to this
side of the art life of Scopas, but in treating of his connection with
the magnificent mausoleum which Artemesia erected at Halicarnassus, to
her husband, Mausolus, king of Caria, it will be argued doubtless that
the work of this artist on that famous mortuary monument, which ranked
as one of the seven winders of the world, was more in the line of a
decorative sculptor than of an architect.
In this undertaking Scopas was associated with three other
architectural sculptors—namely, Bryaxis, Timotheus and Leocarus—all of
whom were Athenians. Each took as his special work the decoration of
one side of the building, Scopas choosing the east or principal façade.
The north and south sides had a width of about sixty-three feet; the
east and west were not quite so wide.
Before outlining further the principal characteristics of the building,
it is only fair to say that the professional architects to whom is
due the credit for the plan of the structure were Phileus, an Ionian
whose name Vitruvius spells in a variety of ways, and Satyrus, whose
native city is not given, but who, according to the same authority,
wrote a description of the mausoleum. Phileus was also an author on
architecture, having written a volume on the Ionic temple of Athene
Polias at Priene, of which he was the designer, and which was one
of the most renowned buildings in Asia Minor, and a treatise on the
mausoleum, which was also located in that part of the globe. As for
Satyrus, whatever may have been the other public buildings of which he
was the architect, there is no record.
The mausoleum had a total height of one hundred and forty feet, and
in general appearance combined orientalism in tomb-structure with the
perfections of Grecian architectural grace and elegance. The tomb
was contained within a rectangular substructure. Above was an Ionic
peristyle temple with nine columns on each side and eleven at the ends.
The frieze was elaborately carved and decorated, and the roof, which
was pyramidal in form, gave the oriental cast to the entire building.
At the apex of the roof was a colossal marble quadriga, in which a
statue of the deceased king Mausolus appeared. It is said that in the
sculptures and carvings of the different sides the respective artists
strove to rival each other, and that although queen Artemesia died
before the tomb was finished the four artists were so interested and
absorbed in their work that they determined to complete it at their own
risk.
Up to the twelfth century after the Christian era this grand tomb stood
in a fairly good state of preservation, but soon after fell to pieces,
and was used from that time as a quarry by the Knights of St. John,
from which they took stone for the castles they built on the site of
the old Greek Acropolis. Later still much of the marble was taken to
repair their fortifications, and it is even said to make lime, showing
to what ignominious uses the very greatest of architectural glories may
finally come. However, some of the carvings have been redeemed from
the fortification walls and unearthed from other places in Budrun, the
modern Halicarnassus, to find a final resting place, let it be hoped,
in the British Museum. These rescued pieces of marble, of which there
are perhaps sufficient to reconstruct a quarter of the whole frieze,
though they are not continuous, are pronounced by competent judges to
be specimens of the work of the different artists, but there is no
means of determining which of them, if any, came from the chisel of
Scopas.
The temple of Athene Alea at Tegea in Arcadia, often a sanctuary for
fugitives from Sparta, was an architectural creation of Scopas, which
it would appear belonged to him exclusively. Of all the temples in the
Peloponnesus this is said by Pausanias to have been the largest as well
as the most magnificent. That observant traveller, however, must have
been carried away somewhat by his enthusiasm over its architectural
attractions in ascribing to it such great size, as its dimensions were
not more than one hundred and sixty-four by seventy feet, being very
much smaller than other Grecian temples.
The temple which Scopas built was not the first to the goddess to
occupy the same site, but followed a very much more ancient one, which
was destroyed by fire in the year 394 B.C. The tendency to introduce
the Corinthian order, which followed after the Peloponnesian wars, and
which continued to grow as Greece became more and more intermixed with
Roman ideas, is here early displayed. The columnar arrangement of the
temple was unusual; for the outside the Ionic style was used, there
being six columns at each end and fourteen on the sides; but on the
inside the Doric order was employed surmounted by the Corinthian. Both
pediments of the building were sculptured by Scopas or from his designs
under his immediate supervision. The pediment over the front portico
portrayed the chase of the Calydonian boar, and that in the rear the
battle of Telephus with Achilles; both being, according to Pausanias,
very animated compositions. The statue of the goddess Athene Alea,
contained in the cell, was carried off by the Emperor Augustus and
placed at the entrance of his new forum in Rome. Some fragments of the
pedimental sculptures have been discovered and placed in the British
Museum.
To Scopas, in co-operation with Praxiteles, is also attributed the
graceful and beautiful Choragic monument of Lysicrates, at one time
called “the lantern of Demosthenes,” from the mistaken supposition
that the great orator used it as a study—a very strange use when it
is remembered that the little structure possessed neither doors nor
windows. In its day this monument was the pride of the street of
Tripods, and it still stands one of the best preserved evidences of the
taste and skill of its designers.
In this monument the Corinthian style of decoration is displayed in its
perfection of grace, better, perhaps, than in any other structure of
that early time which is known to us. Stuart describes it as follows:
“The colonnade was constructed in the following manner: six equal
panels of white [Pentelic] marble, placed contiguous to each other on a
circular plan, formed a continued cylindrical wall, which of course was
divided from top to bottom into six equal parts by the junctures of the
panels. These columns projected somewhat more than half their diameters
from the surface of the cylindrical wall, and the wall entirely closed
up the intercolumination. Over this was placed the entablature and the
cupola, in neither of which any aperture was made, so that there was no
admission to the inside of this monument, and it was quite dark.”
The “flower,” or crowning ornament of the monument, was a particularly
graceful and beautiful arrangement of acanthus leaves and volutes,
and the roof was worked out with great delicacy and originality in
the form of a thatch of laurel leaves and Vitruvian scrolls. If there
was any apportionment of the work on this monument between Scopas and
Praxiteles, it would be interesting to know what it was.
Of the other architectural sculptors associated with Scopas in the
adornment of the tomb of Mausolus none is mentioned as having had any
other connection with architecture in a similar way, but all were
statuaries of distinction and high merit, who executed works in marble
or bronze, or both, that gave them prominence in their art. Among other
works by Bryaxis were five colossal statues in the island of Rhodes, of
which the celebrated “colossus of Rhodes,” however, was not one, and
also a statue of Apollo, which was destined for the temple of Daphnis
near Antiochus. The story is related that Julian the Apostate wished to
render to this figure peculiar worship and homage, but was prevented
from so doing by a miraculous destruction of the temple and statue by
fire. Clement of Alexandria asserts that Bryaxis was the artist of
many works ascribed to Phidias.
As to the share which Timotheus took in the decoration of the mausoleum
there is dispute among the Greek authorities, some ascribing his work
to Praxiteles; but there does not seem to be any just foundation for
the supposition that the sculpturing on the south side of the tomb
was by any other hand than that of Timotheus. As one of the great
statuaries of the later Attic school he was also among the most
prominent, his figure of Artemis being deemed worthy to be placed by
the side of the Apollo of Scopas, and the Latona of Praxiteles in the
temple which Augustus erected to Apollo on the Palatine. Other statues
of conspicuous merit are also ascribed to him by Pausanias and Pliny.
Leochares, the last of the quartette, was also inferior only to Scopas
and Praxiteles in his school of art. He was particularly skilful with
portrait-statues, the most successful of which were those of Philip
of Macedon, Alexander his son, Amyntas, Olympias and Eurydice, all of
which were made of ivory and gold, and were placed in the Phillippeion,
a circular building in the Altis at Olympia, erected by Philip in
celebration of his victory at Chæroneia. But the _chef d’œuvre_ of
Leochares was a bronze statue of the rape of Ganymede. Pliny says of
this work that the eagle seemed to be sensible of what he was carrying
and to whom he was bearing the treasure, taking care not to hurt
the boy through his dress with his talons. The original statue was
frequently copied both in marble and on gems, several of which copies
are still extant: one in the Museo Pio-Clementino, another in the
library of St. Mark in Venice, and still another figures in Stuart’s
Athens, as an alto-relievo found among the ruins of Thessalonica.
[Illustration: Decoration]