Praxiteles.
Until about the year 1880, our knowledge of the great Greek sculptors of
the 4th century was derived mostly from the statements of ancient
writers and from Roman copies, or what were supposed to be copies, of
their works. We are now in a far more satisfactory position. We now
possess an original work of Praxiteles, and sculptures executed under
the immediate direction of, if not from the hand of, other great
sculptors of that age--Scopas, Timotheus and others. Among all the
discoveries made at Olympia, none has become so familiar to the artistic
world as that of the Hermes of Praxiteles. It is the first time that we
have become possessed of a first-rate Greek original by one of the
greatest of sculptors. Hitherto almost all the statues in our museums
have been either late copies of Greek works of art, or else the mere
decorative sculpture of temples and tombs, which was by the ancients
themselves but little regarded. But we can venture without misgiving to
submit the new Hermes to the strictest examination, sure that in every
line and touch we have the work of a great artist. This is more than we
can say of any of the literary remains of antiquity--poem, play or
oration. Hermes is represented by the sculptor (fig. 43 and Plate VI.
fig. 82) in the act of carrying the young child Dionysus to the nymphs
who were charged with his rearing. On the journey he pauses and amuses
himself by holding out to the child-god a bunch of grapes, and watching
his eagerness to grasp them. To the modern eye the child is not a
success; only the latest art of Greece is at home in dealing with
children. But the Hermes, strong without excessive muscular development,
and graceful without leanness, is a model of physical formation, and his
face expresses the perfection of health, natural endowment and sweet
nature. The statue can scarcely be called a work of religious art in the
modern or Christian sense of the word religious, but from the Greek
point of view it is religious, as embodying the result of the harmonious
development of all human faculties and life in accordance with nature.
The Hermes not only adds to our knowledge of Praxiteles, but also
confirms the received views in regard to him. Already many works in
galleries of sculpture had been identified as copies of statues of his
school. Noteworthy among these are, the group at Munich representing
Peace nursing the infant Wealth, from an original by Cephisodotus,
father of Praxiteles; copies of the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles,
especially one in the Vatican which is here illustrated (Plate V. fig.
71); copies of the Apollo slaying a lizard (Sauroctonus), of a Satyr (in
the Capitol Museum), and others. These works, which are noted for their
softness and charm, make us understand the saying of ancient critics
that Praxiteles and Scopas were noted for the pathos of their works, as
Pheidias and Polyclitus for the ethical quality of those they produced.
But the pathos of Praxiteles is of a soft and dreamy character; there is
no action, or next to none; and the emotions which he rouses are
sentimental rather than passionate. Scopas, as we shall see, was of
another mood. The discovery of the Hermes has naturally set
archaeologists searching in the museums of Europe for other works which
may from their likeness to it in various respects be set down as
Praxitelean in character. In the case of many of the great sculptors of
Greece--Strongylion, Silanion, Calamis and others--it is of little use
to search for copies of their works, since we have little really
trustworthy evidence on which to base our inquiries. But in the case of
Praxiteles we really stand on a safe level. Naturally it is impossible
in these pages to give any sketch of the results, some almost certain,
some very doubtful, of the researches of archaeologists in quest of
Praxitelean works. But we may mention a few works which have been
claimed by good judges as coming from the master himself. Professor
Brunn claimed as work of Praxiteles a torso of a satyr in the Louvre, in
scheme identical with the well-known satyr of the Capitol. Professor
Furtwangler puts in the same category a delicately beautiful head of
Aphrodite at Petworth. And his translator, Mrs Strong, regards the
Aberdeen head of a young man in the British Museum as the actual work of
Praxiteles. Certainly this last head does not suffer when placed beside
the Olympian head of Hermes. At Mantinea has been found a basis whereon
stood a group of Latona and her two children, Apollo and Artemis, made
by Praxiteles. This base bears reliefs representing the musical contest
of Apollo and Marsyas, with the Muses as spectators, reliefs very
pleasing in style, and quite in the manner of Attic artists of the 4th
century. But of course we must not ascribe them to the hand of
Praxiteles himself; great sculptors did not themselves execute the
reliefs which adorned temples and other monuments, but reserved them for
their pupils. Yet the graceful figures of the Muses of Mantinea suggest
how much was due to Praxiteles in determining the tone and character of
Athenian art in relief in the 4th century. Exactly the same style which
marks them belongs also to a mass of sepulchral monuments at Athens, and
such works as the Sidonian sarcophagus of the Mourning Women, to be
presently mentioned.
Scopas.
Excavation on the site of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea has
resulted in the recovery of works of the school of Scopas. Pausanias
tells us that Scopas was the architect of the temple, and so important
in the case of a Greek temple is the sculptural decoration, that we can
scarcely doubt that the sculpture also of the temple at Tegea was under
the supervision of Scopas, especially as he was more noted as a sculptor
than as an architect. In the pediments of the temple were represented
two scenes from mythology, the hunting of the Calydonian boar and the
combat between Achilles and Telephus. To one or other of these scenes
belong several heads of local marble discovered on the spot, which are
very striking from their extraordinary life and animation. Unfortunately
they are so much injured that they can scarcely be made intelligible
except by the help of restoration; we therefore engrave one of them, the
helmeted head, as restored by a German sculptor (Plate III. fig. 63).
The strong bony frame of this head, and its depth from front to back,
are not less noteworthy than the parted lips and deeply set and strongly
shaded eye; the latter features impart to the head a vividness of
expression such as we have found in no previous work of Greek art, but
which sets the key to the developments of art which take place in the
Hellenistic age. A draped torso of Atalanta from the same pediment has
been fitted to one of these heads. Hitherto Scopas was known to us,
setting aside literary records, only as one of the sculptors who had
worked at the Mausoleum. Ancient critics and travellers, however, bear
ample testimony to his fame, and the wide range of his activity, which
extended to northern Greece, Peloponnese and Asia Minor. His Maenads
and his Tritons and other beings of the sea were much copied in
antiquity. But perhaps he reached his highest level in statues such as
that of Apollo as leader of the Muses, clad in long drapery.
[Illustration: FIG. 44.--Amazon from Epidaurus.]
Timotheus, Bryaxis, Leochares.
The interesting precinct of Aesculapius at Epidaurus has furnished us
with specimens of the style of an Athenian contemporary of Scopas, who
worked with him on the Mausoleum. An inscription which records the sums
spent on the temple of the Physician-god, informs us that the models for
the sculptures of the pediments, and one set of acroteria or roof
adornments, were the work of Timotheus. Of the pedimental figures and
the acroteria considerable fragments have been recovered, and we may
with confidence assume that at all events the models for these were by
Timotheus. It is strange that the unsatisfactory arrangement whereby a
noted sculptor makes models and some local workman the figures enlarged
from those models, should have been tolerated by so artistic a people as
the Greeks. The subjects of the pediments appear to have been the common
ones of battles between Greek and Amazon and between Lapith and Centaur.
We possess fragments of some of the Amazon figures, one of which,
striking downwards at the enemy, is here shown (fig. 44). Their
attitudes are vigorous and alert; but the work shows no delicacy of
detail. Figures of Nereids riding on horses, which were found on the
same site, may very probably be roof ornaments (acroteria) of the
temple. We have also several figures of Victory, which probably were
acroteria on some smaller temple, perhaps that of Artemis. A base found
at Athens, sculptured with figures of horsemen in relief, bears the name
of Bryaxis, and was probably made by a pupil of his. Probable conjecture
assigns to Leochares the originals copied in the Ganymede of the
Vatican, borne aloft by an eagle (Plate I. fig. 53) and the noble statue
of Alexander the Great at Munich (see LEOCHARES). Thus we may fairly say
that we are now acquainted with the work of all the great sculptors who
worked on the Mausoleum--Scopas, Bryaxis, Leochares and Timotheus; and
are in a far more advantageous position than were the archaeologists of
1880 for determining the artistic problems connected with that noblest
of ancient tombs.
Contemporary with the Athenian school of Praxiteles and Scopas was the
great school of Argos and Sicyon, of which Lysippus was the most
distinguished member. Lysippus continued the academic traditions of
Polyclitus, but he was far bolder in his choice of subjects and more
innovating in style. Gods, heroes and mortals alike found in him a
sculptor who knew how to combine fine ideality with a vigorous
actuality. He was at the height of his fame during Alexander's life, and
the grandiose ambition of the great Macedonian found him ample
employment, especially in the frequent representation of himself and his
marshals.
We have none of the actual works of Lysippus; but our best evidence for
his style will be found in the statue of Agias an athlete (Plate V. fig.
74) found at Delphi, and shown by an inscription to be a marble copy of
a bronze original by Lysippus. The Apoxyomenus of the Vatican (man
scraping himself with a strigil) (Plate VI. fig. 79) has hitherto been
regarded as a copy from Lysippus; but of this there is no evidence, and
the style of that statue belongs rather to the 3rd century than the 4th.
The Agias, on the other hand, is in style contemporary with the works
of 4th-century sculptors.
Of the elaborate groups of combatants with which Lysippus enriched such
centres as Olympia and Delphi, or of the huge bronze statues which he
erected in temples and shrines, we can form no adequate notion. Perhaps
among the extant heads of Alexander the one which is most likely to
preserve the style of Lysippus is the head from Alexandria in the
British Museum (Plate II. fig. 56), though this was executed at a later
time.
Many noted extant statues may be attributed with probability to the
latter part of the 4th or the earlier part of the 3rd century. We will
mention a few only. The celebrated group at Florence representing Niobe
and her children falling before the arrows of Apollo and Artemis is
certainly a work of the pathetic school, and may be by a pupil of
Praxiteles. Niobe, in an agony of grief, which is in the marble tempered
and idealized, tries to protect her youngest daughter from destruction
(Plate VI. fig. 78). Whether the group can have originally been fitted
into the gable of a temple is a matter of dispute.
Two great works preserved in the Louvre are so noted that it is but
necessary to mention them, the Aphrodite of Melos (Plate VI. fig. 77),
in which archaeologists are now disposed to see the influence of Scopas,
and the Victory of Samothrace (Plate III. figs. 61 and 62), an original
set up by Demetrius Poliorcetes after a naval victory won at Salamis in
Cyprus in 306 B.C. over the fleet of Ptolemy, king of Egypt.
Nor can we pass over without notice two works so celebrated as the
Apollo of the Belvidere in the Vatican (Plate II. fig. 55), and the
Artemis of Versailles. The Apollo is now by most archaeologists regarded
as probably a copy of a work of Leochares, to whose Ganymede it bears a
superficial resemblance. The Artemis is regarded as possibly due to some
artist of the same age. But it is by no means clear that we have the
right to remove either of these figures from among the statues of the
Hellenistic age. The old theory of Preller, which saw in them copies
from a trophy set up to commemorate the repulse of the Gauls at Delphi
in 278 B.C., has not lost its plausibility.
[Illustration: Hamdy et Reinach, _Necropole a Sidon_, Pl. 7.