Winkelmann’s “History of Ancient Art” has appeared, and I cannot venture
a step further until I have read it. Criticism based solely upon general
principles may lead to conceits which sooner or later we find to our
shame refuted in works on art.
The ancients well understood the connection between painting and poetry,
and are sure not to have drawn the two arts more closely together than
the good of both would warrant. What their artists have done will teach
me what artists in general should do; and where such a man precedes with
the torch of history, speculation may boldly follow.
We are apt to turn over the leaves of an important work before seriously
setting ourselves to read it. My chief curiosity was to know the
author’s opinion of the Laocoon; not of its merit as a work of art, for
that he had already given, but merely of its antiquity. Would he agree
with those who think that Virgil had the group before him, or with those
who suppose the sculptors to have followed the poet?
I am pleased to find that he says nothing of imitation on either side.
What need is there, indeed, of supposing imitation?
Very possibly the resemblances which I have been considering between the
poetic picture and the marble group were not intentional but accidental,
and, so far from one having served as a model for the other, the two may
not even have had a common model. Had he, however, been misled by an
appearance of imitation, he must have declared in favor of those who
make Virgil the imitator. For he supposes the Laocoon to date from the
period when Greek art was in its perfection: to be, therefore, of the
time of Alexander the Great.
“Kind fortune,” he says,[170] “watching over the arts even in their
extinction, has preserved for the admiration of the world a work of this
period of art, which proves the truth of what history tells concerning
the glory of the many lost masterpieces. The Laocoon with his two sons,
the work of Agesander, Apollodorus,[171] and Athenodorus, of Rhodes,
dates in all probability from this period, although we cannot determine
the exact time, nor give, as some have done, the Olympiad in which these
artists flourished.”
In a note he adds: “Pliny says not a word with regard to the time when
Agesander and his assistants lived. But Maffei, in his explanation of
the ancient statues, professes to know that these artists flourished in
the eighty-eighth Olympiad; and others, like Richardson, have maintained
the same on his authority. He must, I think, have mistaken an
Athenodorus, a pupil of Polycletus, for one of our artists. Polycletus
flourished in the eighty-seventh Olympiad, and his supposed pupil was
therefore referred to the Olympiad following. Maffei can have no other
grounds for his opinion.”
Certainly he can have no other. But why does Winkelmann content himself
with the mere mention of this supposed argument of Maffei? Does it
refute itself? Not altogether. For although not otherwise supported, it
yet carries with it a certain degree of probability unless we can prove
that Athenodorus, the pupil of Polycletus, and Athenodorus, the
assistant of Agesander and Polydorus, could not possibly have been one
and the same person. Happily this is proved by the fact that the two
were natives of different countries. We have the express testimony of
Pausanias[172] that the first Athenodorus was from Clitor in Arcadia,
while the second, on the authority of Pliny, was born at Rhodes.
Winkelmann can have had no object in refraining from a direct refutation
of Maffei by the statement of this circumstance. Probably the arguments
which his undoubted critical knowledge derived from the skill of the
workmanship seemed to him of such great weight, that he deemed any
slight probability which Maffei’s opinion might have on its side a
matter of no importance. He doubtless recognized in the Laocoon too many
of those _argutiæ_[173] (traits of animation) peculiar to Lysippus, to
suppose it to be of earlier date than that master who was the first to
enrich art with this semblance of life.
But, granting the fact to be proved that the Laocoon cannot be older
than Lysippus, have we thereby proved that it must be contemporaneous
with him or nearly so? May it not be a work of much later date? Passing
in review those periods previous to the rise of the Roman monarchy, when
art in Greece alternately rose and sank, why, I ask, might not Laocoon
have been the happy fruit of that emulation which the extravagant luxury
of the first emperors must have kindled among artists? Why might not
Agesander and his assistants have been the contemporaries of
Strongylion, Arcesilaus, Pasiteles, Posidonius, or Diogenes? Were not
some of the works of those masters counted among the greatest treasures
ever produced by art? And if undoubted works from the hand of these men
were still in existence, but the time in which they lived was unknown
and left to be determined by the style of their art, would not some
inspiration from heaven be needed to prevent the critic from referring
them to that period which to Winkelmann seemed the only one worthy of
producing the Laocoon?
Pliny, it is true, does not expressly mention the time when the
sculptors of the Laocoon lived. But were I to conclude from a study of
the whole passage whether he would have them reckoned among the old or
the new artists, I confess the probability seems to me in favor of the
latter inference. Let the reader judge.
After speaking at some length of the oldest and greatest masters of
sculpture,—Phidias, Praxiteles, and Scopas,—and then giving, without
chronological order, the names of the rest, especially of those who were
represented in Rome by any of their works, Pliny proceeds as
follows:[174]—
Nec multo plurium fama est, quorundam claritati in operibus eximiis
obstante numero artificum, quoniam nec unus occupat gloriam, nec
plures pariter nuncupari possunt, sicut in Laocoonte, qui est in Titi
Imperatoris domo, opus omnibus et picturæ et statuariæ artis
præponendum. Ex uno lapide eum et liberos draconumque mirabiles nexus
de consilii sententia fecere summi artifices, Agesander et Polydorus
et Athenodorus Rhodii. Similiter Palatinas domus Cæsarum replevere
probatissimis signis Craterus cum Pythodoro, Polydectes cum Hermolao,
Pythodorus alius cum Artemone, et singularis Aphrodisius Trallianus.
Agrippæ Pantheum decoravit Diogenes Atheniensis; et Caryatides in
columnis templi ejus probantur inter pauca operum: sicut in fastigio
posita signa, sed propter altitudinem loci minus celebrata.
Of all the artists mentioned in this passage, Diogenes of Athens is the
one whose date is fixed with the greatest precision. He adorned the
Pantheon of Agrippa, and therefore lived under Augustus. But a close
examination of Pliny’s words will, I think, determine with equal
certainty the date of Craterus and Pythodorus, Polydectes and Hermolaus,
the second Pythodorus and Artemon, as also of Aphrodisius of Tralles. He
says of them: “Palatinas domus Cæsarum replevere probatissimis signis.”
Can this mean only that the palaces were filled with admirable works by
these artists, which the emperors had collected from various places and
brought to their dwellings in Rome? Surely not. The sculptors must have
executed their works expressly for the imperial palaces, and must,
therefore, have lived at the time of these emperors. That they were
artists of comparatively late date, who worked only in Italy, is plain
from our finding no mention of them elsewhere. Had they worked in Greece
at an earlier day, Pausanias would have seen some work of theirs and
recorded it. He mentions, indeed, a Pythodorus,[175] but Hardouin is
wrong in supposing him to be the same referred to by Pliny. For
Pausanias calls the statue of Juno at Coronæa, in Bœotia, the work of
the former, ἄγαλμα ἀρχαῖον (an ancient idol), a term which he applies
only to the works of those artists who lived in the first rude days of
art, long before Phidias and Praxiteles. With such works the emperors
would certainly not have adorned their palaces. Of still less value is
another suggestion of Hardouin, that Artemon may be the painter of the
same name elsewhere mentioned by Pliny. Identity of name is a slight
argument, and by no means authorizes us to do violence to the natural
interpretation of an uncorrupted passage.
If it be proved beyond a doubt that Craterus and Pythodorus, Polydectes
and Hermolaus, with the rest, lived at the time of the emperors whose
palaces they adorned with their admirable works, then I think we can
assign no other date to those artists, the sculptors of the Laocoon,
whose names Pliny connects with these by the word _similiter_. For if
Agesander, Polydorus, and Athenodorus were really such old masters as
Winkelmann supposes, it would be the height of impropriety for an
author, who makes great account of precision of expression, to leap from
them to the most modern artists, merely with the words “in like manner.”
But it may be urged that this _similiter_ has no reference to a common
date, but to some other circumstance common to all these masters, who
yet in age were widely different. Pliny, it may be said, is speaking of
artists who had worked in partnership, and on this account had not
obtained the fame they merited. The names of all had been left in
neglect, because no one artist could appropriate the honor of the common
work, and to mention the names of all the participators would require
too much time (quoniam nec unus occupat gloriam, nec plures pariter
nuncupari possunt). This had been the fate of the sculptors of the
Laocoon, as well as of the many other masters whom the emperors had
employed in the decoration of their palaces.
But, granting all this, the probabilities are still in favor of the
supposition that Pliny meant to refer only to the later artists whose
labors had been in common. If he had meant to include older ones, why
confine himself to the sculptors of the Laocoon?
Why not mention others, as Onatas and Calliteles, Timocles and
Timarchides, or the sons of this Timarchides, who together had made a
statue of Jupiter at Rome?[176] Winkelmann himself says that a long list
might be made of older works which had more than one father.[177] And
would Pliny have thought but of the single example of Agesander,
Polydorus, and Athenodorus, if he had not meant to confine himself
strictly to the more modern masters?
If ever a conjecture gained in probability from the number and magnitude
of the difficulties solved by it, this one, that the sculptors of the
Laocoon flourished under the first emperors, has that advantage in a
high degree. For had they lived and worked in Greece at the time which
Winkelmann assigns to them, had the Laocoon itself existed earlier in
Greece, then the utter silence of the Greeks with regard to such a work,
“surpassing all the results of painting or statuary” (opere omnibus et
picturæ et statuariæ artis præponendo), is most surprising. It is hard
to believe that such great masters should have created nothing else, or
that the rest of their works should have been, equally with the Laocoon,
unknown to Pausanias. In Rome, on the contrary, the greatest masterpiece
might have remained long concealed. If the Laocoon had been finished as
early as the time of Augustus, there would be nothing surprising in
Pliny’s being the first, and, indeed, the last, to mention it. For
remember what he tells[178] of a Venus by Scopas, which stood in the
temple of Mars at Rome:
... “quemcunque alium locum nobilitatura. Romæ quidem magnitudo operum
eam obliterat, ac magni officiorum negotiorumque acervi omnes a
contemplatione talium abducunt: quoniam otiosorum et in magno loci
silentio apta admiratio talis est.”
Those who would fain see in the group an imitation of Virgil’s Laocoon
will readily catch at what I have been saying, nor will they be
displeased at another conjecture which just occurs to me. Why should not
Asinius Pollio, they may think, have been the patron who had Virgil’s
Laocoon put into marble by Greek artists? Pollio was a particular friend
of the poet, survived him, and appears to have written an original work
on the Æneid. For whence but from such a work could the various comments
have been drawn which Servius quotes from that author?[179] Pollio was,
moreover, a lover of art and a connoisseur, possessed a valuable
collection of the best of the old masterpieces, ordered new works from
the artists of his day, and showed in his choice a taste quite likely to
be pleased by so daring a piece as the Laocoon,[180] “ut fuit acris
vehementiæ, sic quoque spectari monumenta sua voluit.”
Since, however, the cabinet of Pollio in Pliny’s day, when the Laocoon
was standing in the palace of Titus, seems to have existed entire in a
separate building, this supposition again loses something of its
probability. Why might not Titus himself have done what we are trying to
ascribe to Pollio?