_Photo, Mansell._
FIG. 59.--DRUM OF COLUMN FROM EPHESUS. (BRIT. MUS.)
_Photo, Baldwin Coolidge._
FIG. 60.--YOUNG HERMES. (MUS. OF FINE ARTS, BOSTON.)]
Nevertheless one may for convenience speak first of human and afterwards
of divine figures. It was the custom from the 6th century onwards to
honour those who had done any great achievement by setting up their
statues in conspicuous positions. One of the earliest examples is that
of the tyrannicides, Harmodius and Aristogiton, a group, a copy of which
has come down to us (Plate I. fig. 50[2]). Again, people who had not won
any distinction were in the habit of dedicating to the deities portraits
of themselves or of a priest or priestess, thus bringing themselves, as
it were, constantly under the notice of a divine patron. The rows of
statues before the temples at Miletus, Athens and elsewhere came thus
into being. But from the point of view of art, by far the most important
class of portraits consisted of athletes who had won victories at some
of the great games of Greece, at Olympia, Delphi or elsewhere. Early in
the 6th century the custom arose of setting up portraits of athletic
victors in the great sacred places. We have records of numberless such
statues executed by all the greatest sculptors. When Pausanias visited
Greece he found them everywhere far too numerous for complete mention.
It is the custom of studying and copying the forms of the finest of the
young athletes, combined with the Greek habit of complete nudity during
the sports, which lies at the basis of Greek excellence in sculpture.
Every sculptor had unlimited opportunities for observing young vigorous
bodies in every pose and in every variety of strain. The natural sense
of beauty which was an endowment of the Greek race impelled him to copy
and preserve what was excellent, and to omit what was ungainly or poor.
Thus there existed, and in fact there was constantly accumulating, a
vast series of types of male beauty, and the public taste was cultivated
to an extreme delicacy. And of course this taste, though it took its
start from athletic customs, and was mainly nurtured by them, spread to
all branches of portraiture, so that elderly men, women, and at last
even children, were represented in art with a mixture of ideality and
fidelity to nature such as has not been reached by the sculpture of any
other people.
The statues of the gods began either with stiff and ungainly figures
roughly cut out of the trunk of a tree, or with the monstrous and
symbolical representations of Oriental art. In the Greece of late times
there were still standing rude pillars, with the tops sometimes cut into
a rough likeness to the human form. And in early decoration of vases and
vessels one may find Greek deities represented with wings, carrying in
their hands lions or griffins, bearing on their heads lofty crowns. But
as Greek art progressed it grew out of this crude symbolism. In the
language of Brunn, the Greek artists borrowed from Oriental or Mycenaean
sources the letters used in their works, but with these letters they
spelled out the ideas of their own nation. What the artists of Babylon
and Egypt express in the character of the gods by added attribute or
symbol, swiftness by wings, control of storms by the thunderbolt, traits
of character by animal heads, the artists of Greece work more and more
fully into the sculptural type; modifying the human subject by the
constant addition of something which is above the ordinary level of
humanity, until we reach the Zeus of Pheidias or the Demeter of Cnidus.
When the decay of the high ethical art of Greece sets in, the gods
become more and more warped to the merely human level. They lose their
dignity, but they never lose their charm.
The decorative sculpture of Greece consists not of single figures, but
of groups; and in the arrangement of these groups the strict Greek laws
of symmetry, of rhythm, and of balance, come in. We will take the three
most usual forms, the pediment, the metope and the frieze, all of which
belong properly to the temple, but are characteristic of all decoration,
whether of tomb, trophy or other monument.
The form of the pediment is triangular; the height of the triangle in
proportion to its length being about 1:8. The conditions of space are
here strict and dominant; to comply with them requires some ingenuity.
To a modern sculptor the problem thus presented is almost insoluble; but
it was allowable in ancient art to represent figures in a single
composition as of various sizes, in correspondence not to actual
physical measurement but to importance. As the more important figures
naturally occupy the midmost place in a pediment, their greater size
comes in conveniently. And by placing some of the persons of the group
in a standing, some in a seated, some in a reclining position, it can be
so contrived that their heads are equidistant from the upper line of the
pediment.
The statues in a Greek pediment, which are after quite an early period
usually executed in the round, fall into three, five or seven groups,
according to the size of the whole. As examples to illustrate this
exposition we take the two pediments of the temple at Olympia, the most
complete which have come down to us, which are represented in figs. 33
and 34. The east pediment represents the preparation for the chariot
race between Pelops and Oenomaus. The central group consists of five
figures, Zeus standing between the two pairs of competitors and their
wives. In the corners recline the two river-gods Alpheus and Cladeus,
who mark the locality; and the two sides are filled up with the closely
corresponding groups of the chariots of Oenomaus and Pelops with their
grooms and attendants. Every figure to the left of Zeus balances a
corresponding figure on his right, and all the lines of the composition
slope towards a point above the apex of the pediment.
In the opposite or western pediment is represented the battle between
Lapiths and Centaurs which broke out at the marriage of Peirithous in
Thessaly. Here we have no less than nine groups. In the midst is Apollo.
On each side of him is a group of three, a centaur trying to carry off a
woman and a Lapith striking at him. Beyond these on each side is a
struggling pair, next once more a trio of two combatants and a woman,
and finally in each corner two reclining female figures, the outermost
apparently nymphs to mark locality. A careful examination of these
compositions will show the reader more clearly than detailed description
how clearly in this kind of group Greek artists adhered to the rules of
rhythm and of balance.
The metopes were the long series of square spaces which ran along the
outer walls of temples between the upright triglyphs and the cornice.
Originally they may have been left open and served as windows; but the
custom came in as early as the 7th century, first of filling them in
with painted boards or slabs of stone, and next of adorning them with
sculpture. The metopes of the Treasury of Sicyon at Delphi (Plate IV.
fig. 66) are as early as the first half of the 6th century. This
recurrence of a long series of square fields for occupation well suited
the genius and the habits of the sculptor. As subjects he took the
successive exploits of some hero such as Heracles or Theseus, or the
contemporary groups of a battle. His number of figures was limited to
two or three, and these figures had to be worked into a group or scheme,
the main features of which were determined by artistic tradition, but
which could be varied in a hundred ways so as to produce a pleasing and
in some degree novel result.
With metopes, as regards shape, we may compare the reliefs of Greek
tombs, which also usually occupy a space roughly square, and which also
comprise but a few figures arranged in a scheme generally traditional. A
figure standing giving his hand to one seated, two men standing hand in
hand, or a single figure in some vigorous pose is sufficient to satisfy
the simple but severe taste of the Greeks.
In regard to friezes, which are long reliefs containing figures ranged
between parallel lines, there is more variety of custom. In temples the
height of the relief from the background varies according to the light
in which it was to stand, whether direct or diffused. Almost all Greek
friezes, however, are of great simplicity in arrangement and
perspective. Locality is at most hinted at by a few stones or trees,
never actually portrayed. There is seldom more than one line of figures,
in combat or procession, their heads all equidistant from the top line
of the frieze. They are often broken up into groups; and when this is
the case, figure will often balance figure on either side of a central
point almost as rigidly as in a pediment. An example of this will be
found in the section of the Mausoleum frieze shown in fig. 70, Plate IV.
Some of the friezes executed by Greek artists for semi-Greek peoples,
such as those adorning the tomb at Trysa in Lycia, have two planes, the
figures in the background being at a higher level.
The rules of balance and symmetry in composition which are followed in
Greek decorative art are still more to be discerned in the paintings of
vases, which must serve, in the absence of more dignified compositions,
to enlighten us as to the methods of Greek painters. Great painters
would not, of course, be bound by architectonic rule in the same degree
as the mere workmen who painted vases. Nevertheless we must never forget
that Greek painting of the earlier ages was of extreme simplicity. It
did not represent localities, save by some slight hint; it had next to
no perspective; the colours used were but very few even down to the days
of Apelles. Most of the great pictures of which we hear consisted of but
one or two figures; and when several figures were introduced they were
kept apart and separately treated, though, of course, not without
relation to one another. Idealism and ethical purpose must have
predominated in painting as in sculpture and in the drama and in the
writing of history.
We will take from vases a few simple groups to illustrate the laws of
Greek drawing; colouring we cannot illustrate.
[Illustration: (_Brit. Mus. Catalogue of Vases_, iii, Pl. vi. 2).