out the Lysippic tradition to its logical conclusion, and which
consequently we are practically bound to attribute to Rhodian artists.
But until we have a definite copy of Chares’ work we must argue
backwards to the first Rhodian school, of which we have no direct
information, from the later Rhodian school, of which we know a great
deal. The Laocoon[70] and the Farnese Bull[71] are certified works
of Rhodian art of the first century B.C., and they show us a type
of male figure which is quite distinct from the types of Pergamene
and Alexandrian art. We are, therefore, entitled to argue back to
the Rhodian school of the third century, and to attribute to it such
athletic sculpture as is clearly of the earlier date while offering
distinct technical and stylistic resemblances to the later groups.
The male figures of this later period differ from the Pergamene works,
with which they are most easily compared, in certain well-defined
points. The heads are smaller and rounder and the hair is rougher and
less carefully arranged. The eyebrows have a tendency to form sharp
angles with the nose instead of the broad straight curves of the
Pergamene brows. This makes the bridge of the nose thinner and usually
substitutes vertical forehead wrinkles for the swelling frontal sinus
of Pergamene work. Except in cases of great strain the torso muscles
are treated with more restraint, but the veins receive more careful
attention, especially on the abdomen. In the back a more broken-up
system of muscles replaces the great upright rolls on either side of
the backbone, which mark Pergamene work. Finally, the proportions are
slighter and more Lysippic.
These considerations apply most powerfully to two great statues of
the Louvre, whose third-century date is almost certain: the Borghese
Warrior[72] and the Jason (Fig. 30). The former statue is by Agasias
of Ephesos, an artist whom we can date with some degree of certainty
in the middle of the third century. The Jason comes so close to the
Lysippic type of Poseidon on the one hand and to the Fighter of Agasias
on the other, that the Lysippic-Rhodian origin of the two is fairly
well established. The analogies of the Borghese Warrior with the
Apoxyomenos have been often pointed out, but his resemblances to the
Laocoon and the Farnese groups require an equal recognition. Both the
Louvre statues show the influence of a later generation on the Lysippic
type. While reproducing the general proportions, each develops
Lysippic innovations to a further degree. Lysippos made a distinct
advance in anatomical skill, but both these statues show a more exact
scientific knowledge. While their torso muscles are less prominent,
they reveal new details in abdomen, groin, and the inner side of the
thighs, unknown to the earlier sculptor. They also develop much further
the Lysippic substitution of an all-round figure for a merely frontal
one. Each of them can be regarded effectively from any point of view,
and neither has any real front. They, therefore, represent a distinct
technical advance. But at the same time they show a decline in artistic
feeling, for there is perhaps too much science about them. They belong
to a school immensely interested in detail, and tending, therefore,
to lose its grasp on the general treatment. The anatomical structure
of the male form cannot be rendered more perfectly than in the statue
of Agasias, so well known to all art students, but the statue affects
us with a feeling of strain and discomfort from its want of unity and
repose. All the athletic statues of the Rhodian school seem to be
restless and unsatisfied. There is none of the calm repose about them
that marked earlier Greek art. The desire to display newly acquired
scientific knowledge invariably demands a strained and therefore
disquieting motive. As we shall see when we come to examine the Laocoon
later, the influence of the stage appears to be affecting sculpture.
Poses are histrionic, and expression begins to depend upon grimaces and
action rather than upon more subtle indications of feeling.
With the Borghese Fighter and the Jason we may class, perhaps, a work
like the Actaeon torso in the Louvre,[73] and also that much discussed
and very beautiful work, the Subiaco Youth.[74] This shows the same
restraint in torso modelling which distinguished the Praying Boy and
the Resting Hermes, but in the strain of its attitude it resembles
rather the Fighter of Agasias, especially in the twist of the body
above the waist, which Lysippos had originated and which his pupils
tend to exaggerate. One of the disquieting features of the Borghese
Fighter is that he implies the presence of another figure which is not
there. He is a fighter without an opponent. The Subiaco Boy is in the
same plight. His attitude can hardly be other than that of a suppliant
touching chin and knee of his enemy in Greek fashion. His artistic
defect is that he again is a suppliant without an enemy, part of a
group without his counterpart. In their anxiety to study the human
figure in all positions the Rhodian artists were apt to overlook the
question of artistic unity.
[Illustration: 29]
[Illustration: 30]
Two fine bronzes in the Terme Museum may be attributed with some
certainty to Rhodian artists, in view of the Rhodian monopoly of
Hellenistic bronze casting. Both are Greek originals--the seated
boxer[75] and the hero resting on a lance (Fig. 29). The latter is
commonly called a portrait of some Hellenistic prince, but the absence
of the royal tiara or any personal indications is significant rather of
a heroic type. The face is strongly individual, but so is that of the
Boxer, the Fighter of Agasias, and even the Jason. We have no reason to
see a portrait in any of them, but personality is beginning to affect
even ideal statues in the Hellenistic age. The hero with the lance
is a fine, if rather histrionic, figure more or less following the
Lysippic type of Alexander with the lance[76] and showing a somewhat
massive and emphatic rendering of a Lysippic type. He belongs to the
later Rhodian school, into which exaggeration has crept, rather than to
the more restrained art of the third century. The Boxer, on the other
hand, brutal and coarse as his expression is, has no trace of muscular
exaggeration, and is an earlier work. His broken nose, swollen ears,
scarred face, and blood-bespattered hair show the unsparing realism of
the artist. He is another instance of the all-round statue of the late
Lysippic school, a masterpiece of technique, if a somewhat disagreeable
work of art.
We can connect the names and the works of few of the earlier Rhodian
artists, but Boethos of Chalcedon is now established as a worker in
Rhodes,[77] where he received the honour of προξενία. Pliny mentions
his Boy Strangling a Goose,[78] and the many copies of this statue in
existence give us a good idea of its popularity. Boethos was apparently
a silversmith and also a sculptor of boys. He was famous as a maker
of elaborate couches, and we are possibly the possessors of such a
couch in the fine bronze litter of the Conservatori Museum,[79] on
which are little boys’ heads strikingly similar to the Boy with the
Goose. This group is often quoted as an example of the new feeling for
_genre_ or homely domestic detail in sculpture. It is, in fact, of
great importance for its new recognition of the comic in art, and for
the appearance of the fat chubby boy like the Erotes of Ephesos or the
little statuettes of Alexandria. The small boy or girl now becomes a
favourite subject of the sculptor, and we may compare closely with the
Boy of Boethos the Eros and Psyche of the Capitol (Fig. 32), who are
really a little boy and girl engaged in a children’s game.
We must now turn to another very important side of Rhodian art--the
delineation of female drapery. The followers of Lysippos favoured an
austere style, and the nude female figure has no place in Rhodian art.
But while the other sculptors of the Hellenistic world were modifying
and to some extent vulgarizing the beautiful conceptions of Scopas
and Praxiteles, the Rhodians were attacking the draped female figure
as they inherited it from Praxiteles and Lysippos, and producing
modifications just as interesting and important as those connected with
the athletic statue.
[Illustration: 31]
[Illustration: 32]
[Illustration: 33]
We know that Philiskos of Rhodes was the author of a group of Muses
which was much admired in Rome. It has been suggested that the new type
of female drapery which appears on an altar from Halicarnassos and on
the relief of the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, certainly
a member of the Rhodian school, was his work.[80] This new type of
drapery is to be seen also in a number of statues of Muses, of which
we have a collection from Miletos in the museum of Constantinople.[81]
It may be described most simply as an aggravation and exaggeration of
the style of drapery introduced by the school of Praxiteles. The desire
to get a series of folds at sharply contrasting angles leads to a very
artificial arrangement of the dress, which produces an inharmonious
effect. But there is a new development which deserves our attention.
Transparent drapery had been elaborated by Alkamenes and the pupils
of Pheidias, but always with the intention of displaying the body
beneath it. The new drapery of the Muses is transparent with the desire
to display other drapery beneath it. The earlier Greeks had used a
thick mantle over a transparent chiton, but the Rhodian author of the
new drapery used a transparent mantle over a clinging chiton. He thus
doubles the subtlety of his technique, and provides himself with a
series of new and intricate problems, just as the athletic sculptor
does with his anatomical discoveries.
This transparent mantle immediately obtained an immense vogue, and it
comes down into Roman art as a strong rival of the late Praxitelean
drapery, which, however, still prevails by the side of the other. The
greater number of Roman female draped statues use one or the other type
of garments. The Milesian Muses are not in themselves great works of
art. The real technical possibilities of the new drapery are better
displayed by a wonderful figure from Magnesia in Constantinople (Fig.
31), in which the new fashion is rendered with consummate skill. It
is of considerable importance that we should date this change in
drapery as accurately as possible. The date hitherto proposed for its
supposed author Philiskos has been put about 220 B.C. The Apotheosis
of Homer is taken to be about 210 judging from a portrait of Ptolemy
IV appearing in it, and the Halicarnassos base is put about the same
time. But the portrait is by no means certainly that of Ptolemy IV.
It is more like Ptolemy II, and might belong to any period. Philiskos
himself has nothing to do with it. A female figure by him with a
signed base has been discovered in Thasos (Fig. 33). The drapery of
this female figure follows the type of the Mantinean basis,[82] and
the earlier Muses group of the Vatican. The inscription is not earlier
than the first century B.C. Philiskos, then, was a late artist who
used the Praxitelean drapery. As for the transparent drapery, it is
highly improbable that it was invented before the frieze of the great
altar at Pergamon. We know that Rhodian artists worked on this altar,
and Rhodian style is visible in some of the figures, but transparent
drapery of the Rhodian type appears nowhere on the frieze. There seems
to be no reason to date any figure wearing this drapery earlier than
190 B.C., and we should therefore attribute it to the second century.
We have seen in the Antioch of Eutychides the Praxitelean type taken
over by the earlier Rhodian artists in the third century. Have we any
link by which we can connect the transparent mantle with the earlier
form?
[Illustration: 34]
The answer to this question is provided by one of the greatest statues
of antiquity, the Victory of Samothrace (Fig. 34). The date and school
of this masterpiece are still warmly disputed, and the current view
tends to connect it with the victory of Demetrios Poliorcetes in 306,
by which he won the command of the sea. Coins of Demetrios show a
trumpet-blowing Victory on the prow of a ship in an attitude closely
resembling the Louvre statue. But the statue has no connexion with
the coin, for a detailed study of the neck and fragments of the right
shoulder reveals the impossibility of the trumpet-blowing attitude.
The right hand and arm are raised high and backwards probably with a
victor’s wreath. Moreover, the coin has a low girdle and no cloak, the
statue the high third-century girdle and a great flapping mantle. The
type is not so rare as might be expected. We have it in small bronzes,
and we have it also _in situ_ on a votive statue in Rhodes. The
Victory of Samothrace is a later version of the statue possibly erected
by Demetrios. Its Rhodian origin depends partly on the extraordinary
_finesse_ and delicate naturalism of its drapery, a study never popular
in Pergamon, and partly on the strong probability, not yet decisively
proved, that the marble of its base is Rhodian. The latter point may
provide definite proof, but the former is the one on which we must at
present rely. The Rhodian origin or at least the Lysippic connexions
of the statue are further supported by the twist above the waist so
universal among the followers of that artist and the strong vital
momentary pose, which is wrongly rendered in the present attitude of
the statue. It is not a standing figure, but a Victory who is just
alighting after flight, and it should therefore be tilted farther
forward. The only statue now existing which presents a real parallel to
the intricate folds of the Victory’s drapery is the Magnesian statue
already mentioned,[83] which belongs to the new Rhodian drapery school.
But the mantle of the Victory is older in type. Thus the Victory’s
drapery stands midway between the Antioch figure and the new Rhodian
fashion. It shows just that scientific naturalism which we have noticed
in the anatomy of the athletic figures, and just that tendency to miss
the perfect whole by an over-anxious care for detail. The date for such
work is 250 and not 300 B.C. The Chiaramonti Niobid[84] is a work of
similar tendency though of a different school, and must fall about the
same date.
We now possess some evidence for the continuous study and development
of female drapery at Rhodes parallel to the study and development of
the male form. The Rhodian school is in fact the most industrious and
the most scientific of all the Hellenistic art centres. In mastery of
detail they are unapproachable, but they have ceased to care much for
motive or idealism in their subjects. To such art both impressionism
and romantic feeling are foreign. Rhodian art is very versatile and
very straightforward, but its constant aspiration after the unusual
renders it in the end monotonous.
The earlier and later periods of Rhodian art are separated by the
quarrel with Rome and consequent loss of the land-empire in 167 B.C.
This ended the real independence of Rhodes, and with it disappeared
the inventive genius of her artists. She continued for another century
to be the great and almost the sole centre of art production, for both
Pergamon and Alexandria now lost all artistic importance, but she
ceased to develop and originate. The works of her second period are
brilliant in the extreme, but they are no longer vital and progressive.
It is significant that the best-known works of this period are great
groups rather than single statues. We may notice the Laocoon group, the
Farnese Bull, the ‘Pasquino’ of Ajax and Patroclos, the Scylla group,
and the group of Odysseus with the Cyclops. Of these the earliest is
perhaps the Farnese Bull,[85] which we possess in an Antonine copy at
Naples from the Baths of Caracalla. It represents the punishment of
Dirce by Zethos and Amphion for her cruelty to their mother Antiope.
The two heroes hold the bull, to whose horns they are about to tie
the unfortunate Dirce. It was made by Apollonios and Tauriskos of
Tralles, and brought from Rhodes to Rome by Asinius Pollio. The date
can be fixed by a comparison of inscriptions to about the year 130
B.C. Tauriskos’ son has signed a base at Magnesia about 100 B.C. Both
Tauriskos and Apollonios were adopted by Menecrates, son of Menecrates,
one of the artists of the Pergamon frieze. But in examining the group
we must beware of the Roman additions and restorations, which include
nearly all the landscape details together with the figure of Antiope
and the mountain god. The head of Zethos is a portrait of Caracalla.
The group has been adapted to act as a centre-piece for the great hall
of the Baths of Caracalla, and consequently has been made square.
Even in its original form, however, it must have been a good example
of all-round sculpture. The figures are Lysippic, and the lower part
of Dirce, which is the only antique part of her, shows more archaic
drapery than usual. This is only what we might expect from an art
which has passed its prime. Novelty of treatment is no longer a first
essential. Tauriskos also made figures called Hermerotes. These must
have been herm figures with an Eros head similar to a statue in
the courtyard of the Conservatori Museum, and comparable with the
Hermathena, which belonged to Cicero. Herms of all kinds became very
popular in Greco-Roman art, and we see here in Rhodes perhaps the first
development of the old archaistic Dionysos herms into more modern
studies.
Another dramatic group similar to that of the Farnese Bull and the
Laocoon was the lost group by Aristonides of Rhodes, showing Athamas in
remorse for the murder of his son, Learchos. Pliny tells a foolish tale
that the sculptor mixed iron with the copper in order to portray the
blush of shame, a story told also about the Jocasta of Silanion.
A little figure of Odysseus (Fig. 35) in the Chiaramonti gallery of
the Vatican holding out a bowl of wine to the Cyclops must be part
of another mythological group of this period. The movement and action
of the hero are typically Rhodian, and his face corresponds to the
Rhodian type. The rest of the group is lost. The group of Scylla and
the sailors of Odysseus is represented only by a much mutilated and
fragmentary copy in Oxford, which gives us little information.
We have more copies of the well-known Pasquino group of Menelaos
or Ajax and Patroclos. There are fragments in the Vatican, and a
well-preserved replica in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence (Fig. 36).
Here again the extraordinary interest in anatomical forms is shown not
only in the strain and twist of the living hero--the invariable twist
of all these Rhodian figures--but in the admirable contrast between the
vivid living body and the relaxed corpse. This contrasting of physical
and mental conditions is a part of the dramatic feeling in later
Rhodian art, which has quite abandoned its earlier simplicity and has
followed on the lines of _baroque_ extravagance laid down by the second
Pergamene school.
[Illustration: 35]
[Illustration: 36]
Of all the groups the best known and the most instructive is the
latest of all, the Laocoon.[86] In this marvellous group we see the
full development of the effect of strained agony on the human form,
and we see the mature form contrasted both with an active youth’s body
and with the semi-inanimate body of the younger boy. When we have
removed the restorations and lowered the right arm of Laocoon nearer
to his head, we get a perfect group-design unified by the terrible
serpent-coils and by the central theme of agony. The torso muscles
of Laocoon are fully developed and even exaggerated, though not to
the same extent as those of the Pergamene frieze, but the boys’ forms
are simpler, and all reflect the basic principles of Rhodian art
already enumerated. Pain is shown by the downward sloping eyebrows with
sharp interior angles, by the half-closed eyes, wrinkled forehead, and
parted lips. The hair is wild, and all the veins of the body stand out
sharply. The twist above the waist occurs in all three bodies. It is
interesting to notice that even in the Laocoon, the latest work of the
most scientific school of Greek sculpture, anatomical accuracy is still
lacking. The lower curve of the ribs above the abdomen follows a line
impossible in nature, and the left thumb of the elder son is provided
with three joints instead of the normal two. Neither the Laocoon nor
any one of the other Rhodian groups is perfectly satisfactory to modern
taste. There is too much strain, too much agony, too little relief or
repose. Every inch of the group is illustrative of pain and passion.
Our sense of sympathy is deadened by excessive emphasis and repetition.
But in technical skill the group has never been surpassed.
A close parallel to the head of the Laocoon is found in the bearded
centaur of the pair made by Aristeas and Papias of Aphrodisias (Fig.
38). Copies of this statue existing in the Capitol and in the Louvre
show the despair of the elderly victim of love in the guise of a
centaur tormented by a little Eros on his back. The companion figure
(Fig. 37) is young and delights in the persuasions of his rider.
This group of rather obvious allegory belongs to the Antonine age,
but the resemblance to the Laocoon proves a first-century original,
which is interesting because it is one of the earliest examples of a
corresponding pair of statues clearly designed for house decoration.
The growth of ‘cabinet pieces’, as opposed to temple or national
dedications, now develops into the whole mass of furniture sculpture
in the shape of candelabra, table-legs, consoles, decorative herms,
&c., which mark the imperial age.
The school of Rhodes ends in extraordinary brilliance. There is nothing
decadent in its technique, nothing paltry in its conceptions. We have
seen the very pure and slightly finicky naturalism of the early third
century give way to a rather more _baroque_ extravagance in detail,
but in neither its earlier nor its later stage did the purest of the
Hellenistic schools affect the exaggerations of Alexandria or Pergamon.
In Rhodes, at any rate, the steady development of Greek sculpture
reached its perfect and logical conclusion. We have seen it start
with a great idealism and no technique at all. In the fifth century
technique and idealism are almost equally balanced. In the Laocoon the
last word of technical perfection is spoken, but there is no idealism
at all, only a man and two boys writhing in the grasp of serpents. It
is not photographic naturalism, but it is histrionic, artificial, and
dead. We cannot believe in the Laocoon as we believe in the Hermes of
Praxiteles.
[Illustration: 37]
[Illustration: 38]
IV
THE MAINLAND SCHOOLS DURING THE HELLENISTIC AGE
While the full tide of artistic development was running in the new
societies of Pergamon, Rhodes, and Alexandria, the Greek mainland
became a backwater. The rise of the kingdoms meant the decline of
the old autonomous city states. Athens in particular fell into the
background on account of her uncompromising hostility to the power of
Macedonia. In spite of some brief periods of revival, her destiny was
for the future rarely in her own hands, and her political subordination
seems to have reacted with great rapidity upon her artistic output. She
remained for another century after the death of Alexander the home of
philosophy, but her art began to revive only after the Roman conquest,
in a new form, which will require later consideration. Here at least
the Hellenistic age is a period of rapid decadence and decline.