[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 200.--Central Figures of the Western Gable, Temple of Athene upon aegina.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 201.--Harmodios and Aristogeiton. (Copies in Naples.)]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 202.--Apollo after Canachos. (British Museum.)]
An established conventionalism,--that contentment with the mere handiwork of acquired forms which existed for centuries in the lands of the Nile and Tigris,--was not possible in the early art of progressive Greece. Upon the foundation of the artistic ability already attained at this period, various local schools and individual sculptors rose to a higher level, and effected an advance, partly by opening new channels for the artistic industry of all h.e.l.las, partly by pursuing paths which remained peculiar to themselves. Athens and aegina are especially prominent in this activity; but, notwithstanding many scholarly researches, the history of art is not able to distinguish with certainty between the works of the two cities, an Attic example a.n.a.logous to the chief work of the island being wanting for instructive comparison. The chief difference between the two may have been that the former school had a less strict and trained execution than the latter, with more grace of form and n.o.bility of bearing. Callon and Onatas were prominent artists of aegina, the latter seeming to have been the more celebrated.
On account of the hardness of their work, both were considered inferior to Calamis. Onatas is particularly interesting from our knowledge of two of his chief sculptures--extensive dedicatory offerings to Olympia and Delphi, one of which represented the Greeks before Troy, casting lots to determine upon an opponent for Hector, and the other the combat over the fallen King of the Tapygians, Opis. The subjects of these works, especially the latter, and the peculiarity emphasized by Pausanias that the heroes before Troy were represented armed only with helmet, spear, and shield, probably to give scope for the display of the artist"s skill in the treatment of the nude, remind us of the two well-preserved groups from the gables of the Temple of Athene at aegina, which, in point of style, must have been closely allied to those of Onatas. These priceless marbles were discovered in 1811, and the next year, by a chain of fortunate circ.u.mstances, came into the possession of Louis I., then Crown-prince of Bavaria. Ten of the remaining statues belong to the western gable, and five to the eastern; the greater part of the former group is thus preserved, and, as the scenes in both gables are almost entirely alike, their general arrangement may be restored with reasonable certainty. That over the chief front represents the struggle for a fallen hero, probably Oicles in the contest of Heracles and the aeginetan Telamon with Laomedon of Troy. In the rear tympanon the scene is the recovery of the body of Achilles or of Patroclos. Subjects so closely allied could lead to no great difference of composition, at most to such slight variations as the characterization of Heracles in the first group or of Paris in the second, if this latter be considered an episode in which that hero took part. In both gables the fallen warrior lay at the feet of the protecting Athene (_Fig._ 200), while on each side, symmetrically disposed, a combatant of either party endeavors to seize the body and drag it forth from the fray. Above these stooping figures warriors threaten each other with lances; but it is not certain whether there were two or four of these actively engaged. The latter number has been recently a.s.sumed from numerous fragmentary remains, which, if appertaining to the group at all, it is impossible otherwise to locate; the refutation of this theory of Lange, which has been attempted by Julius, does not terminate the vexed question. These warriors were followed, according to Brunn"s arrangement, by two kneeling lance-bearers, perhaps protecting the two archers in similar position with their shields. One of the archers is shown by a leathern cuira.s.s and the so-called Phrygian cap to be an Oriental, perhaps Paris.
With the exception of Heracles in the eastern gable, who is characterized by his lion"s skin, none of the other combatants are personally distinguishable. The corners of the triangle are filled by two fallen warriors. The whole group is thus composed with strict reference to symmetrical correspondence, and to the conditions imposed by the gable; all attempt to attain relative action and realism is abandoned, and the impression of a pantomime is inevitable. The outlines of the bodies, their position and action, are correct even to the minutest details, and show a certainty of form and a technical perfection, which, in the absence of all support for the bodies, or for the extreme thinness of the shields, is truly astonishing. The figures of the eastern gable appear particularly perfect, and are apparently the works of later sculptors, less limited, in point of style and artistic ability, than the master, or masters, of the western group. If in the latter, as before remarked, it is natural to think of Onatas, the former is correspondingly attributable to Calliteles, the son, scholar, and a.s.sistant of Onatas, who worked in great measure like his father, but also under the progressive influence of a younger generation. In remarkable contrast to the excellent and, in formal characterization, almost faultless, anatomical treatment of the bodies, two things appear particularly important as indicating the limits of the artistic ability of the time--namely, all the heads and the two statues of the deity Athene. The former are without ideal beauty or expression, for which the sculptor evidently felt himself incapable. He therefore carved the features according to a certain formula, and the apparent smile, resulting from the mouth being drawn outward and the corners of the eyelids extended, is to be regarded as a meaningless reminiscence of the older style. The eyes are too protruding and the chin too pointed and small, defects of the earlier practice, not as yet entirely overcome.
The Athene shows how obstinately the devotional images were denied the advances made in other sculptures, so that the traditional and hallowed type might be preserved, as much as possible, from change. While for the other statues the artist had before his eyes the living combatants of the palaistra, his model for this was the sacred image standing within the temple. The evident contrast between the stiff bearing and archaic garments of the Athene and the rest of the group is thus more naturally explained than by the view that, in the artist"s conception, the G.o.ddess did not need any real action, that a slight lifting of the shield, as a divine "thus far and no farther," was sufficient to show her supernatural power and to protect the fallen. The awkward turn of the feet, which was owing less to the limitations of s.p.a.ce than to the reminiscence of an antique devotional image, might the more safely be ventured, because it could not be seen at all from below. That the sculptor, however, in his loving devotion to his work, took small advantage of this last consideration, is clear from the fact that the bodies are as carefully finished upon the back as upon the front, although one half of this labor could never have been appreciated from the first installation of the figures until their discovery among the overthrown ruins and their reception in the Munich Glyptothek. The effect of the whole was essentially heightened by the bronze accessories, such as lances, belts with swords, bows, arrows, a Gorgoneion and serpents upon the aigis of Athene, etc.; and even more by the intense red, blue, and other colors upon the helmets and waving crests, shields, and borders of the garments, sandals, and leather-work, as well as by the tinting of the hair, eyes, and lips--all which painting was probably in strict harmony with the neighboring architectural members, which were doubtless treated with similar pigments. Of other statues of archaic stamp only one has proved to be contemporaneous with, and of the same school as, the gable sculptures of aegina--namely, the so-called Strangford youth in the British Museum. The work is more closely allied to the statues of the western than to those of the later eastern gable of the temple; but, notwithstanding a marked similarity in the treatment of the torso, the formation of the features differs so distinctly that the figure can hardly be ascribed to the same master. When Pausanias says of Onatas that, although belonging to aegina, he still does not rank him below any contemporaneous sculptor of Attica, this summary praise speaks less directly for the individuality of Onatas than for the decided relative position of the two schools. It shows that in general the style of aegina was esteemed inferior. It may be concluded that there were at least three Athenian sculptors of this time who surpa.s.sed the artists of the gable groups of the temple upon aegina, namely, Hegias (Hegesias), Critios, and Nesiotes, not to mention the somewhat older Endoios, Antenor, and Amphicrates. Literary notices of their works do not convey any valuable information; but Friedrichs has discovered in the sculptures of the Museum of Naples which hitherto had pa.s.sed under the name of the Gladiators, copies from one of the best works of Critios and Nesiotes. (_Fig._ 201.) They represent Harmodios and Aristogeiton, the a.s.sa.s.sins of the tyrant Hipparchos,--a group recognized by an Attic tetradrachm, by the relief ornamenting a marble seat at Athens, and by a weaker reproduction now in the Giardino Boboli at Florence. As copies of this kind do not allow definite conclusions concerning the style of celebrated monuments, we must regard in them only the general composition. They suffice, however, to show that the figures, which are of a free and bold action, cannot be referred to the Monument of Antenor, built as early as 509 B.C. Besides the schools of aegina and Athens, there were at this period sculptural workshops of good repute in Sikyon, Argos, Corinth, and Thebes. As early as the time of the Cretan Daidalidae Dipoinos and Skyllis, Sikyon was one of the chief cities of artistic industry; and at the beginning of the fifth century two celebrated brothers, Canachos and Aristocles, stood at the head of a local school which lasted for seven generations. The chief work of Canachos, the colossal Apollo of the Branchidae sanctuary in Miletos, holding a movable, probably automatic, stag in the outstretched right hand, is known only by representations upon coins, and by a bronze statuette in the British Museum (_Fig._ 202); the latter shows that the master was but little removed from the archaic hardness of earlier times, though endeavoring to attain greater power and n.o.bility of form, particularly in the head and features. Another colossal Apollo by Canachos in Thebes differed from the figure in Miletos in being made of wood. The chryselephantine Aphrodite in Sikyon, represented with the polos upon the head and with poppy flower and apples in the hands, must have been particularly archaic in conception. Two other works, more removed from hieratic influences and limitations, were probably of a less restricted style; namely, the Muse with the Syrinx, executed with two others by the master"s brother, Aristocles, and the Young Racers.
The school of Argos is celebrated by one great name, immediately connected with the highest development of art, Ageladas, the contemporary of the masters of aegina, Athens, and Sikyon previously mentioned. From the silence of ancient authors in regard to this master"s style, little information can be given concerning it; it is only known that the Muse with the Barbiton, his many figures of Zeus and Heracles, various statues of victors, quadrigas, and groups of votive offerings in Delphi, were of bronze. Ageladas was the teacher of three of the greatest sculptors of Greece--Myron, Polycleitos, and Pheidias; and he must, if on this account alone, be ranked above his contemporaries. The history of art would receive but little furtherance by a detailed consideration of the other Argive sculptors, Aristomedon, Glaucos, and Dionysios; of the Corinthians, Diyllos, Amyclaios, and Chionis; of the Thebans, Aristomedos, Socrates, and others; of Callon of Elis; or of the Spartan Gitiades. Prominent as these must have been, they appear rather to have demonstrated the vigor of their schools, and the influence of those of aegina and Athens, than by individual gifts to have raised themselves above the academic art of their time. As masters of personal importance, in whom the progress made by their own genius far exceeded their early training, may be mentioned three younger sculptors: Calamis, probably of Athens; Pythagoras of Rhegion, in Magna Graecia; and Myron of Eleutherae, on the borders of Botia. Calamis worked chiefly in devotional figures, and in these could not entirely throw off the hieratic limitations in regard to position and treatment of details. He was accounted somewhat less hard in style than Canachos or Callon, but inferior to Myron in truthfulness to nature. This master seems to have made little advance in the modelling of the body as a whole, though Lucian praises the rhythmical position of the feet and the beauty of the joints of his Sosandra; but in the representation of the head he succeeded in making decided progress when compared with the artists of the gable groups of aegina. In this respect his Alcmene must have been highly important; but chief among the works of Calamis was the Sosandra, probably an Aphrodite, which became proverbial on account of its grace and beauty. Lucian, when comparing the most distinguished examples among all the works of art to ill.u.s.trate perfect beauty, did this with the significant words, "Calamis may ornament our ideal with chaste modesty, and its smile may be honorable and unconscious as that of Sosandra." In view of this judgment, it is plain that the stiff, ugly heads of the aeginetan marbles are not to be imputed to the works of Calamis; that the graceful and beautiful formation of the features was one of the chief improvements effected by him. The limitations of his art are indicated by another notice. Pliny relates that Calamis was unsurpa.s.sed in his representations of horses; but Praxiteles removed a charioteer from one of the older quadrigas, and created another in its place, "that the men of Calamis might not appear inferior to his animals." His charioteer must consequently have contrasted unfavorably with the horses and disturbed the harmony of the whole; this need by no means be considered as contradictory to the accounts of the beauty of his devotional images, for the charming grace which distinguished the quiet figures of deities and heroes was to be exchanged in the charioteer for an athletic life, corresponding, in position and action, to the exciting situation, and such representations evidently were beyond the powers of the otherwise able master. Examples authentically referable to Calamis do not exist, though the statue of Apollo upon the Omphalos, found in Athens, shows at once the archaic limitations and the advancing mastery which may be ascribed to this period of Greek sculpture; while the so-called Vesta, now in the possession of Torlonia, may have preserved reminiscences of the Sosandra. Both these works are evidently the products of artists who did not conceive the G.o.ds as merely graceful and pleasing, but as strict and serious beings. Statues of Apollo by Calamis are known to have been brought from the Kerameicos in Athens, and from a city upon the sh.o.r.es of the Pontos, to the Roman capitol; but this can hardly be adduced as an argument in favor of the authenticity of the figure upon the Omphalos.
To those very points in which Calamis failed, the two other artists named devoted themselves with signal success. The works of Pythagoras of Rhegion, who limited himself to bronze as a material, while Calamis worked in marble, gold, and ivory, betray no connection with those of the latter in regard to subjects, for the greater number were statues of victors and representations of heroes in somewhat genre-like conception.
Of the former, Pausanias and Pliny praise the Enthymos as one of the most excellent among the forest of images dedicated at Olympia; of the latter, the limping Philoctetes was celebrated by many epigrams, as causing the observer to himself feel the pain of the wounded foot. To attain such an expression, it is not sufficient to characterize the suffering in the affected limb alone, but the pain must be evident in the entire body, in bearing as well as in step; in the continued tension of all the muscles, and in the one-sided strain upon the sound leg. The Philoctetes ill.u.s.trates an otherwise incomprehensible account of the master"s ability. Diogenes of Laerte says that Pythagoras, of all sculptors, first regarded rhythm and symmetry. This unity of motion or rhythm, with the equipoise or symmetry which alone lends a feeling of security and harmonious perfection to the different members of figures under excitement, is that which made the work so effective. The same principles must have distinguished the statues of victors, which were apparently intended rather as examples of the various modes of combat, or the preparations therefor, than as individual portraits. The chief merit of this master appears, according to this, to have consisted in the organic truthfulness to nature of his figures, and this is by no means contradicted by the rather trivial judgment of Pliny that Pythagoras was the first to indicate sinews and veins, and to more carefully model the hair; for increased anatomical correctness came naturally with the organic action and realism of these works.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 203.--Marble Copy of the Discos-thrower by Myron.
(In the Palazzo Ma.s.simi alle Colonne in Rome.)]
In this expression of the movement by every part of the body exercised, Pythagoras was still surpa.s.sed by Myron. A founder of metal, like the former, he acquired his fame chiefly as a maker of the statues of victors, although, with acknowledged versatility, he executed numerous images of deities and heroes. Two of the first were highly celebrated--the Runner Ladas and the Discos-thrower; both of them belonging to that cla.s.s of works which ill.u.s.trated the nature of the game itself. For Ladas was shown at the moment when, after overstrained effort, he had reached the goal, and there, as victor, had fallen dead: according to the expression of an epigram upon the work, it was as if the last breath from the empty lungs were pa.s.sing his lips. For such a creation even the most perfect position of running, and indication of relative action in trunk and arms, were not sufficient; the great point lay in the panting breast and the open mouth and nostrils: the last effort of the lungs must have been wonderfully shown. Another epigram speaks of the "_breather_," not of the _runner_, Ladas. That this marvellous representation of concentrated action was not to the disadvantage of the outer members is shown by the other victor before mentioned, the discos-thrower, the fame of which is demonstrated not only by the praise of Lucian, but by the numerous copies made during antiquity. Many of the latter have been preserved, marbles of the size of the original, and bronze statuettes, giving evidence of the fascinating action in the swing of the discos; the athletic body of the youth bending forward to gain greater impetus; the toes of one foot clinging to the ground, those of the other slid along its surface; and everything prepared for the fling which is instantly to follow. And yet the best-preserved copy, that in the Palazzo Ma.s.simi (_Fig._ 203), must certainly be in every respect inferior to the original. A mythological genre-group by Myron appears from existing copies to have been equally effective: it ill.u.s.trated the legend of the flute, invented and cast away with a curse by Athene, and found by the unfortunate Marsyas.
Statues in the Lateran and British Museum show the Satyr starting back in surprise, the momentary action of desire and fear being seized and expressed with as consummate mastery as were the athletic movements of the runner and the discos-thrower. It was this same spirit of life that caused Myron"s cow to be so celebrated in antiquity that no less than thirty-six epigrams have been handed down concerning it. Petronius, in praising this master, says that, in representing animals, Myron seemed to enclose the very breath of life in the bronze; and when Pliny says that he multiplied nature, he can have no other meaning than that the artist attained so life-like an effect that his works appeared rather to have grown than to have been an artistic creation.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 204.--Statuette of the Athene Parthenos, Athens.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Head of Pheidias.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 205.--Fragment in the British Museum, imitated from the Shield of the Athene Parthenos.]
The schools of aegina, Athens, Sikyon, Argos, Rhegion, and the other cities where art had chiefly centred, flourished during the Persian wars--that greatest period of Greece, from 490 to 450 B.C., when Myron, the scholar of Ageladas, was still young. The unequalled grandeur of this age, which resulted in the splendid culmination of all h.e.l.lenic life, must have furthered art, all the more as the devastation of the war, and the subsequent enrichment of the victors, offered full opportunity and means for monumental activity. What influence this had upon architectural industry has been described in a foregoing section, and it may be easily understood that sculpture went hand-in-hand with this; the larger temples needed their images of the G.o.ds, their gable groups, metope reliefs, and friezes, as also their complement of sculptural votive offerings, prompted by the grat.i.tude of the victors.
Athens, more than any other place in Greece, found occasion and means for these works, having been laid waste in 480 and 479 B.C. by Xerxes and Mardonios as no other large city of Greece had been. By means of the taxes levied upon the confederated states after the siege of Mycale, its possessions were greater than those of all the other h.e.l.lenic republics together. Athens therefore saw the most perfect flower of Grecian architecture come forth from the ashes of the Persian catastrophe, and by its side appeared the grandest creations of sculpture. Yet neither of these arose like magic from the wasted ground; it was necessary that the nation should first take breath, should recover from the almost supernatural exertions made during the war, and provide for defence and shelter by the building of fortifications and dwellings. It was not until after this that they could devote themselves to great monumental undertakings, the perfect completion of which required more than one generation, and sculptured ornamentation was thus still further postponed. The older masters. .h.i.therto considered had little or no part in the chief works of this period. The mind of Themistocles was so practical, and so much directed towards fortifications, that he could have little thought for occupying the artists with monumental sculpture. His successor, Kimon, son of Miltiades, began to build anew the places of worship, but did not go so far as to inst.i.tute sculptural ornament, at least in its chief const.i.tuent, statuary. This first ripened to perfection in the reign of Pericles, and a favorable fate ordained that, just at this time, when it was needed as never before, a genius appeared under whose guidance the most complete development was attained. This greatest of sculptors was Pheidias, the son of Charmides, an Athenian by birth. When a boy of ten years, he had seen his countrymen, under Miltiades, go forth to Marathon, and, as a youth, had shared in the rejoicing over the glorious victory of Salamis. At that time, having probably left the school of Hegias, his first teacher, he turned towards Ageladas the Argive, who may have come to Athens in order that, in the rebuilding of the city, he might employ his art in works which have remained unknown to us. When Pericles entered upon his much celebrated presidency (444 B.C.), Pheidias, already advanced in years, enjoyed a fame so great throughout all Greece that, as soon as Pericles had installed him at the head of the entire monumental work of Athens, artists of distinguished rank placed themselves, without envy, under his lead. With only the scanty and scattered literary notices that we possess, it is impossible, from the works of this master, to ill.u.s.trate his life before the time of Pericles, these being not only imperfectly known, but connected with but few chronological facts. Chief among his productions is to be mentioned a group in bronze consecrated at Delphi by the Athenians under Kimon, from a t.i.the of the booty taken at Marathon. It represented Miltiades between Athene and Apollo, surrounded by the ancestral heroes of the ten Attic Phylae. In artistic respects nothing more is known of this than of the statue of a youth crowning himself with the victor"s band in Olympia; of a wounded Amazon, a work prepared for a compet.i.tion in which Pheidias was surpa.s.sed by Polycleitos; of a marble Hermes in Thebes; or of three draped statues of Aphrodite, one of which, that in Elis, was chryselephantine, the other two having been of marble. The artist employed his powers mostly in a higher province--in figures of Athene and of Zeus. Six of the former are more or less known; the most celebrated was the bronze Athene of Lemnos upon the Acropolis of Athens, so called because dedicated by Attic colonists from that place, and distinguished by the name of "the beautiful;" a second was the colossal statue, likewise of bronze, standing between the Erechtheion and the Propylaea, whose helmet-crest and lance-point gleamed above the roof of the Parthenon, twenty metres high, and was visible at sea as far as the promontory of Sunion. The shield standing upon the ground--and perhaps a later creation--was ornamented by Mys, after a design by Parrhasios, with an embossed centauromachia. Not to speak of the Athene Areia at Plataea, a colossal wooden figure with garments of gold, the nude parts being of marble, we come finally to the incomparable chryselephantine figure in the Parthenon at Athens, in which the type of Athene was forever firmly established. Some few accounts--a marble statuette lately found in Athens (_Fig._ 204), a miserably careless imitation; and also a poor copy in marble of the shield, discovered soon after, in the British Museum (_Fig._ 205)--render it possible to understand the composition in its chief outlines. Standing erect, the head slightly inclined forward, clothed with the sleeveless chiton and the aegis, the helmet decorated with the sphinx, she supported her left arm upon the shield, at the same time holding the lance, which leaned against her shoulder and bore the serpent of Erichthonios, coiling upward; the right arm, outstretched, carried a figure of Victory, two metres in height, which, turned towards the G.o.ddess, offered her a wreath of gold. The base of the statue, and even the rims of the thick-soled sandals, were ornamented with reliefs. The golden shield showed, within, the gigantomachia, and, without, the battle of the Amazons, concerning which we have further information from the discovery above mentioned.
The fatal portrait of the artist himself may be plainly recognized in the strongly individualized features of a bald-headed man with the battle-axe in his uplifted hands, prominent because of his almost entire nakedness among the completely equipped youths. This portrait caused the merciless persecution of the sculptor and his patrons; after the charge of embezzling the gold upon the garments of the Athene had been proved groundless by the removal and weighing of the metal, this figure gave opportunity for complaint of sacrilege, and the artist was forced to pa.s.s the remainder of his life in a prison. The Athene Parthenos was surpa.s.sed by the colossal statue of the Panh.e.l.lenic Zeus in Olympia, likewise chryselephantine, which exhibited the highest triumph of Pheidias. The G.o.d, with a green enamelled olive-wreath crowning his golden locks, and in garments brightly bordered with gold, was seated upon a magnificent throne, the legs of which were ornamented with figures of Victory in two rows, and the arms with sphinxes, while the back was terminated with groups of Horae and Charites, the steps, cross-bars, sheathing-boards, etc., of the support being decorated with many other sculptures in the round and in relief. In his right hand, turning towards him, was a Victory, and in his left a sceptre, tipped with the eagle, formed from a combination of many metals. This figure was majestic, with an expression mild, yet so powerful that a gesture would seem sufficient to make earth and heaven tremble. The artist had made this double expression his aim, guided in his creation by the lines of Homer where he portrays the G.o.d of G.o.ds nodding in a.s.sent to Thetis, who begs for the glorification of her son Achilles:
"He said, and nodded with his shadowy brows, Wav"d on th" immortal head th" ambrosial locks, And all Olympos trembled at his nod."
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 206.--Coins of Elis. One third enlarged.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 207.--From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon.
Demeter and Persephone.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 208.--From the Eastern Gable of the Parthenon.
Aphrodite and Peitho.]
That Pheidias attained his ideal was unanimously attested by his own time, and by the later world so long as it had opportunity to see this wonderful production. Even divinity itself must have approved, since, according to the beautiful legend, as the master, at the perfecting of his work, prayed for a sign of favor from heaven, a stroke of lightning entered the temple and fell upon the floor in a spot which was marked in later times as sacred. A feeling pervaded all antiquity that the Olympian Zeus of Pheidias was the grandest and most divine of all works of art, which not to have seen was a misfortune to be lamented, and the sight of which lifted from the soul its cares and sorrows. Instead, therefore, of dwelling upon the praises given by the ancients to the details, we should seek rather to understand the princ.i.p.al traits which justified this opinion, and which were characteristic of the master. The archaic constraint prevalent in works of Ageladas and Calamis had been overcome; but the combination of all previous results, and a nearly absolute correctness of form, united to an ideal beauty quite beyond any real experience, could not have been the chief causes of this admiration. These were, indeed, important, especially in view of the enormous difficulties presented by the chryselephantine process--in the working of gold-plate; in the preparation, shaving, and uniting of the ivory, so unpliant to the chisel, and, finally, in securing it to the wooden form. But the essential and characteristic merit lay in the bodily incarnation of a grand and truly G.o.dlike ideal, employing the human form only as a word through which the elevated thought found expression. The artist had set before himself the most exalted aim--namely, to present to the eyes of the world the highest conception of divinity as seen in Athene, the G.o.ddess of the mind, and in Zeus, the king of G.o.ds. Hence the large number of Athenes executed by Pheidias, and the Aphrodite Urania, the great "heavenly" G.o.ddess, the feminine principle of the universe; hence, also, the fewer representations of masculine or heroic forms, or of subordinate deities, in which this master might be excelled--as by Polycleitos in his Amazon--because they did not accord with his nature, or contain within themselves that ideal greatness which he wished to unfold. Although the two chryselephantine colossal statues, notwithstanding the perishable nature of their construction, were comparatively long preserved--being in existence at the end of the fourth century A.D.--still, there are no copies which show more than their general composition. The marble statuette of Athene (_Fig._ 204) has already been mentioned; in regard to the Olympian Zeus, a copy upon a coin of Hadrian, which shows the usual carelessness and weakness (_Fig._ 206), has in later times been justly preferred to the mask of Zeus from Otricoli, formerly considered a copy after Pheidias.
Though the cla.s.sical notices frequently give the only information concerning the masterpieces of Pheidias, numerous original remains from his workshop still exist. We cannot adduce as examples the glorious metopes and frieze of the so-called Theseion in Athens, perfect as appear these representations of the deeds of Heracles and Theseus upon the former, and of the battle of the Centaurs and t.i.tans upon the latter; for as it is not known when this temple was dedicated, it cannot be shown that its ornaments were executed in the period which came under the artistic direction of Pheidias. Nor can we attribute to this school the sculptures of the Erechtheion, which were not completed until 408--the beautiful caryatides of the portico, or the remnants of relief from the frieze, preserved, unfortunately, only in scanty fragments.
These figures, indeed, instead of being carved from the blocks of the frieze itself, were formed piecewise of Pentilic marble, and fastened upon a dark ground of Eleusinian stone, probably for the effect of color. As little may we cite the better-preserved reliefs upon the frieze and bal.u.s.trade of the small temple of Wingless Victory before the Propylaea, which, from their great likeness to the sculptures upon the mausoleum of Halicarna.s.sus, seem rather to belong to the following period. Overbeck thinks it probable that the frieze has reference to the battle at Plataea; and the bal.u.s.trade, according to Kekule, may have something to do with the return of Alkibiades. In judging the Pheidian school, the Parthenon offers, however, abundant material in the three kinds of sculpture--round statues, high and low relief; although the unhappy bombardment of Athens by the Venetians in 1687, when the bursting of a bomb in the beautiful temple, then used as a powder-magazine, and the succeeding explosion, destroyed more than half the work. The last two centuries also have not pa.s.sed without leaving their mark; so that Lord Elgin"s robbery may, after all, have proved an advantage, the greater part of the sculptures having been protected and rendered accessible, since the beginning of this century, in the halls of the British Museum. It is particularly unfortunate that the gable groups have suffered most; for the perfection of these chief works must have appeared of the greatest importance to the artist, and these colossal statues would have given the best exposition of his ability.
Before the catastrophe above mentioned, however, these were badly injured in consequence of the Temple of Athene Parthenos having been transformed into the Church of Maria Parthenos, and later into a mosque, the destruction appearing also to have been aided by the wilful malice of Christian and Moslem fanatics. They were still further reduced after the explosion by the unsuccessful attempt of the Venetians to carry off as trophy a marble chariot and horses. The few notes of Pausanias upon the subjects of the gable groups, the drawings of a French artist, Carrey (taken not long before the bombardment), and the remains preserved in the British Museum are sufficient to convey a conception of the general composition. The eastern gable represented the birth of Athene; not the unfortunate, artificial scene where the G.o.ddess springs, ready equipped, from the head of Zeus, as frequently shown in pictures upon vases and bronze mirrors, but the moment after, when she appears before the deities of Olympos. The entire central part of the group including the highest deities, the chief feature of the composition, is lost; the rest is in greater part preserved. As the scene was in Olympos, Helios and Selene, with their quadrigas, were fittingly chosen as the limits of the composition; the former rising from the sea, in the left angle of the gable, the latter sinking in the right; night disappearing before the dawn. The adjoining statues, though much mutilated, have been preserved. Next to Helios was Dionysos, resting upon his tiger"s skin; with two sitting female figures, Demeter and Persephone (_Fig._ 207), to whom hastens Iris, announcing the birth of Athene. Upon the other side, next to Selene, lay Aphrodite in the lap of Peitho (_Fig._ 208); and then Hestia, to whom Hermes, as the other messenger, brings the glad tidings: these latter sculptures were almost entirely destroyed in the time of Carrey. Nike--Victory--remaining only as a torso, appears to have followed with Ares, advancing towards the middle of the gable bringing greetings to the newly born G.o.ddess. All the rest was destroyed before 1680 A.D., and the princ.i.p.al figures of the composition are consequently unknown; but it is probable that between the Victory and Athene stood Hephaistos, recoiling after having delivered the blow upon the head of Zeus. Athene stood beside her father, but it is not certain whether the latter was exactly in the centre of the gable, or whether the two figures were equally removed from it. If this last were the case, which is perhaps probable, the division of the s.p.a.ce would require still another deity upon the right side. The remaining G.o.ds of Olympos, Poseidon, Artemis, and Apollo, were probably arranged in this order between Zeus and Iris. The group of the western gable represented the contest of Athene and Poseidon for the Attic land. The composition is reasonably certain, though the middle figures have here also disappeared. The two chief deities, standing at either side of the olive-tree in the centre, turn towards their chariots, that of Athene being driven by Victory, that of Poseidon by Amphitrite; horses were harnessed to both, that of Poseidon not having been drawn by dolphins or hippocamps, as formerly supposed. The consciousness of victory was expressed by the bearing of Athene and of her steeds, while the bowed head of Poseidon acknowledged his defeat: the exclusion of the salt waves of the sea from the blooming meadows and groves watered by the Kephissos. The angles of the gable beyond the chariots were occupied by the retinue of the contestants, and by local deities; the accurate determination of these is impossible, though upon the side of Athene may have been grouped the representatives of the Athenian continent, and upon that of Poseidon those of the sea and the islands; while the figure of Kephissos is supposed to have filled the extreme corner at the left, and Ilissos with Callirrhoe that of the right. The scene was laid in Attica; and, as the earthly locality was to be clearly characterized and populated, it was advisable not to introduce again all the Olympian deities of the eastern gable. It is probable that during antiquity the landscape seen from this chief front of the Acropolis was famous for many local myths no longer familiar to the scholar, in ignorance of which an adequate explanation is impossible. The compositions alone give evidence of the grandeur and elevation of the master who produced and arranged them, in a truthfulness to nature at once ornamental and unconstrained. The remains, with great simplicity and breadth of detail, show a force and majesty which raise them above all known works of sculpture. In their loving and perfect modelling of the nude and of the drapery, in their freedom from affectation of motive or of rendering, and in their utter lack of any striving after meretricious effects, they appear rather the creations of magic than the labored carvings of men.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 209.--Fragment from the Frieze of the Parthenon Cella.]
The glorious and celebrated frieze, or, to speak more correctly, zophoros, surrounded the entire cella. It is preserved in nearly four fifths of its entire length, the chief part of the remains being in the British Museum. It is evident that but little, if any, of this extensive decorative work could have been executed by the hand of Pheidias himself; but the grand design may be a.s.sumed to have been his, and the carving was certainly done under his supervision. The scene represented is the festive Pan-Athenaic processions, an imposing consecration of elaborate gifts to the guardian deity, and probably also a division of prizes to the victors in the various hippic, gymnastic, and musical games. The movement of the train commences upon the southwestern corner of the cella, and advances thence to the east, the entrance side of the temple. It is thus naturally divided into two parts, one of which occupies the western and northern, the other the southern side of the cella; these are united above the p.r.o.naos, where the double procession is shown as having arrived at the temenos before the temple; a priest and priestess, with the persons directly employed in the sacrifice, are preparing themselves for the sacred act--the former by laying aside his upper garment, which he gives to the youth standing beside him, the latter by taking a folding-seat from a female servant. (_Fig._ 209.) Between this central group and the remainder of the divided procession several deities, turned from the former figures, are watching the approach of the train. At the left sits Zeus, enthroned, beside the veiled Hera; these are followed by the Winged Victory, Ares clasping his right knee with both hands, Demeter with the torch, and Dionysos, who rests his right arm carelessly upon the shoulder of Hermes. Upon the right, next to the high priest, was naturally the place of Athene, and upon her left hand are still traces of the fallen aegis; beside her was Hephaistos, leaning upon his knotted stick; then, looking towards him, Apollo, and further Peitho, Aphrodite, and Eros, the latter carrying a shade for the sun. The G.o.ds sit comfortably as spectators who feel themselves to be invisible. The first figures of the train, the leaders, have already attained their destination, and stand quietly conversing, supported upon their wands. In the succeeding women and virgins, who bear vases, cups, cooling-vessels, braziers for incense, and baskets--a wonderful train of perfectly beautiful forms--the advance decreases in movement as they approach the centre. Upon the two long sides follow herds of animals for sacrifice; the cows, proceeding quietly, scarcely need guidance, while the bulls are more or less restless, reminding one, in their forcible and momentary action, of the life-like works of Myron.
After them follows the music of the procession--players upon the flute and lyre and the festive chorus; then begins the long line of chariots and of horses with their riders, which fill the greater part of the zophoros upon the longer sides and all of that over the epinaos. The beauty and truth in the action of these figures are unsurpa.s.sed; the most manifold variation of position is combined with perfect adaptation to the peculiar style of low-relief, and the wisest reference to the fitting of the composition within the s.p.a.ce defined by the architectural lines. While upon the eastern front the procession had arrived at its destination, on the western the scene was still at the place of a.s.semblage and marshalling. Here the horses are bridled and arranged in ranks; but the groups of men and youths stand in disorder, some hastily arming themselves, others binding their sandals or adjusting their mantles. Every action and gesture is simple and full of meaning; they never mar the unity of the whole nor interfere with the neighboring figures. The nude forms and the drapery are most carefully and equally executed throughout; the accessories are forcibly, though less elaborately, indicated. When the ceremonial reliefs of a.s.syria or Persia are compared with the frieze of the Parthenon, it becomes strikingly evident that the magnificence of personal accoutrements and inanimate objects which was so painfully and minutely detailed by the Asiatic sculptor, and elevated even above his schematic representations of deities and human beings, was as nothing to the Greek artist in comparison with the intellectual and physical beauty to which the great h.e.l.lenic race gave their chief interest.
The third group of Parthenon sculptures, the ornaments of the metopes, must least have harmonized with the nature of Pheidias. The architectural framework must have become a hindrance and a fetter, and the problem how to fill ninety-two square tablets of exactly the same size with similar representations must indeed have appeared a thankless task. These reliefs are in greater part lost, or so mutilated as to be unintelligible; but as far as can be judged by the scanty remains, the subject of the metopes upon the eastern side was the gigantomachia, that of both long sides princ.i.p.ally the Centauromachia, while that of the western side was either the battle of the Amazons or of the Persians. In contrast to the low-relief of the frieze, these, originally colored, were--on account of the conditions of light--worked in such high-relief as even, in some parts, to be freed from the ground. The variation of subjects bearing so strong a resemblance is wonderful, especially in the struggling Centaurs and Greeks, where but little scope in the victory of one or the other combatant was possible: these are interrupted by the rape of virgins and other scenes not surely to be determined. Naturally, this desperate task would not have been completed without some few artistic inequalities, repet.i.tions, and far-fetched modifications, especially as much of the execution must necessarily have been submitted to inferior sculptors; but some of the metope reliefs appear, in point of composition within the given s.p.a.ce, and in grand, characteristic drawing, scarcely less admirable than the frieze of the cella. From all these works the spirit of the school of Pheidias is manifest in its imposing majesty and ideal simplicity; at times, also, traces of the forcible action of Myron may be observed.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 210.--From the Eastern Gable of the Great Temple of Zeus, Olympia.]
These extensive productions of the school and workshop of Pheidias cannot be directly attributed to any of the known scholars and a.s.sistants of the master, many of whom attained individual celebrity. In the first rank of these should be mentioned Agoracritos of Paros, the favorite pupil of Pheidias, whose works were so perfect that the ancients were frequently in doubt to which of these sculptors they should be ascribed; it is possible, however, that this doubt may have arisen from the predominant impression left upon some of the statues by the guidance and a.s.sistance of the master. The chief creations of Agoracritos were two Athenes, a Zeus, and notably the colossal figure of Nemesis at Rhamnous, supposed to have developed from the unsuccessful Aphrodite prepared for the compet.i.tion with Alcamenes. Another scholar and a.s.sistant of Pheidias was Colotes of Paros, a sculptor who appears to have restricted himself to the chryselephantine process, and who is especially noted for the part taken by him in the execution of the great Olympian Zeus. Other works in gold and ivory by Colotes were the Athene upon the Acropolis of Elis, an Asclepios erected in the vicinity, and the sacred table in the great Temple of Zeus, for the division of prizes after the Olympic games, the sides of which were ornamented with reliefs.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 211.--From the Western Gable of the Great Temple of Zeus, Olympia.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 212.--Head of Apollo, from the Western Gable of the Great Temple of Zeus, Olympia.]
Alcamenes of Athens, or Lemnos, and Paionios of Mende have hitherto been considered as chief among the scholars of Pheidias; but the recent excavations at Olympia have done much to refute this opinion, unless, as is very possible, Pausanias makes a mistake (v. 10) in a.s.signing to Alcamenes the sculptures in the front gable of the Temple of Zeus, instead of the acroteria above them, which alone is mentioned in an inscription as his work. No one can detect in the discovered fragments of these gable sculptures, more numerous than those of the Parthenon, the slightest dependence upon the art of Pheidias, which they appear to precede in point of development. The group of the eastern front, ascribed by Pausanias to Paionios, represented the instant before the chariot race of Oinomaos and Pelops (_Fig._ 210); that of the western the struggle of the Lapithae and Centaurs at the wedding of Peirithoos.
(_Figs._ 211 and 212.) The character of these works seems rather to connect them with the school of Calamis than with that of Pheidias, this being especially the case with the metopes. (_Fig._ 213.) The question will hardly be decided until authenticated sculptures by Calamis, or remains of the gable groups of the temple at Delphi, which were the production of his scholars Praxias and Androsthenes of Athens, have become known to science. In the meantime, it is impossible to disprove the hypothesis of Brunn, who sees in those of Olympia examples of an art peculiar to Northern Greece, remarkable for its picturesque realism and lack of artistic and ideal conventionalization. It is only certain that these groups are far inferior to those of the Parthenon, and, indeed, to those produced by any workshop of Athens after the time of Pheidias.
Even if the questionable account of Pausanias prove to be true, it is certain that a judgment of the artistic style of Alcamenes and Paionios cannot be formed upon these decorative sculptures alone. Works of the stage of development shown by the western gable of Olympia could not have ranked with the bronze Pentathlos of the former artist, which was known in antiquity by the predicate "exemplary;" nor could an Aphrodite of Alcamenes have been preferred to a statue by Agoracritos, which had been retouched by Pheidias himself. The extensive employment of Alcamenes in Athens among the greatest successors of Pheidias and Myron would have been impossible had not his works been far higher in every respect than those attributed to him among the recent discoveries in Olympia, in view of which it is inconceivable how Pausanias could speak of Alcamenes and Pheidias almost as equals. The same argument applies to Paionios, of whose works a fortunate ill.u.s.tration has been provided by one of the most important discoveries made in the Altis, the Victory (_Fig._ 214), authenticated by an inscription upon the high triangular pedestal. This figure does indeed recall the spirit and methods of the Pheidian sculpture, and differs greatly from the remains of the eastern gable, as may readily be seen by comparison of _Figs._ 210 and 214. This contrast is only to be explained by a gigantic and almost inconceivable progress, or by the a.s.sumption that they were the works of different artists and periods.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 213.--Metope from the Cella of the Great Temple of Olympia. Atlas, Heracles, and the Nymph of the Hesperides.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 214.--Victory of Paionios, from Olympia.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 215.--From the Frieze of the Temple of Phigalia.]
If the Attic artists of this age be likened to planets revolving about the Pheidian sun, there were not wanting stars of the second magnitude, belonging to other systems and moving in other circles. Especially prominent among these latter was the direct and indirect school of Myron, an artist so p.r.o.nounced in his wonderful naturalism that his style could not be extinguished even by the dominating idealism of Pheidias. Lykios, son of Myron, appears, from two celebrated works, to have followed closely in the footsteps of his father. These were the statues upon the Acropolis of Athens representing two boys, one of whom bore a basin for holy-water, while the other blew the coals in a censer into a lively glow. The latter reminds one of Myron"s Breathing Ladas; in this, as in the Runner, the quickened breath was the essential thing, and was not confined alone to the swollen cheeks, but must have been evident in the breast and body. The figure bearing the font was a zealous choir-boy, panting under a too heavy burden; and this also recalls the Ladas. Still another statue, the Pancratiast Autolicos, claimed by Urlich for Lykios, seems to have resembled the Discos-thrower of Myron. That Lykios did not confine himself to such genre-like specialties is shown by groups like the Argonauts, and by the votive offering of the citizens of Apollonia at Olympia, a truly grand composition representing Zeus deciding the result of the strife between Memnon and Achilles, according to the aethiopis of Arctinos. In connection with Lykios may be mentioned Styppax of Cyprus, whose masterpiece, the Splanchnoptes--the entrail-roaster, a man fanning a fire--recalls in turn the choir-boy blowing the coals. Similar to the Dying Ladas, though less directly connected than these last examples, was the mortally wounded warrior of Cresilas, in which, according to cla.s.sical accounts, the last moments of life could be measured; his wounded Amazon also appears to have been more in the style of Myron and Pythagoras than of Pheidias. No works by the immediate followers of Myron now remain, nor any attested copy; still there can be little hesitation in ascribing to this school an important achievement, not perhaps belonging to it so fully as do the architectural sculptures of the Parthenon to the workshop of Pheidias, yet having more in common with the school of Myron than with that of any previous master. This is the frieze of the Temple of Apollo at Phigalia--now in the British Museum--the architectural position of which has already been defined.
The temple is said to have been built under the direction of an Athenian architect; it is probable, therefore, that Attic sculptors were employed for its ornamentation, especially as the sculptures betray no trace of the Argive influence which prevailed elsewhere in the Peloponnesos, and which will be further treated below. Though the subjects were Attic, as battles of Amazons and Centaurs, they cannot be likened to the school of Pheidias, for, instead of the pa.s.sionless grandeur and ideal simplicity which characterized the sculptures of the Parthenon, there is in them a vehemence and excitement known at this period only in the works influenced by Myron. It is not strange that this excessively pa.s.sionate action should sometimes be wanting in beauty; the power of execution at command in the remote city among the Arcadian mountains was not of the first rank, and the guidance of a master, like him who directed the sculptural work of the Parthenon, was wanting.
Two artists of this period were entirely independent, proceeding in degenerate directions; first, Callimachos, noted as an artisan in metal-work, who executed the rich and elegant lamp of the Erechtheion, and was said to have originated the Corinthian capital; but who, as a sculptor, carried a refined delicacy and formal perfection even to an extreme. This won for him the cognomen of Catatexitechnos--the unreasonably careful. Callimachos did not, like Apelles, know when to withdraw his hand from his work, which agrees with Pliny"s judgment concerning him, that, by over-exactness in execution, all grace was lost. A still more questionable tendency is shown by Demetrios of Alopeke, in Attica, the first realist. Pre-eminently a sculptor of portraits, he affected striking characteristics at the expense of beauty, and made it his specialty to represent the likenesses of decrepit men and women. A priestess sixty-four years old, and an aged Corinthian field-officer, Pelichos--"a bald-head with a pot-belly, tangled and flying beard, and veins projecting roundly under the withered skin," according to the description of Lucian--must have been so far from ideal and refreshing beauty that it would seem rather to have been the aim of the artist to ill.u.s.trate age as its destroyer.
Thus, in comparison with Pheidias and Myron, Demetrios resembled Thersites among the heroes of Troy.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 216.--Copy of the Doryphoros in the Museum of Naples.]
Argos deserves the second place as the site of the artistic industry of this period, which had then been greatly advanced by Polycleitos of Sikyon, a fourth scholar of Ageladas, and somewhat younger contemporary of Pheidias, but in a direction different from that of the Attic school.
Myron had characterized intense and momentary animal life, Pheidias that of absolutely ideal and divine being. Polycleitos chose as his aim the artistic representation of the highest human beauty--a positive type of bodily perfection. The Doryphoros, known in antiquity as the masterpiece of the latter, and celebrated as a canon, was a youth in a quiet position, bearing a lance; it was considered the embodiment of perfect form, the master himself having written a treatise upon the proportions of the human figure in ill.u.s.tration of this statue. It is not improbable that Polycleitos, in this work, desired to set a pattern before his numerous scholars; that he was himself too dependent upon this academical tendency may be judged from the slightly disparaging words of Pliny that "his works were almost as if taken from one model."
According to the intention of the artist and to the general conviction of his time, the Doryphoros represented absolute perfection of the human body; and this left the master but little scope for the varying of his model, if he would not prove untrue to that beauty which Cicero has praised so highly in all his works. The so-called Apoxyomenos--an athlete sc.r.a.ping himself with a strigil--similar in subject to the statue of Lysippos (_Fig._ 229), was also a figure placed in the quiet att.i.tude of parade, if not, like the Doryphoros, with an academic purpose. A third work, the so-called Diadoumenos, a boy binding his head with a fillet--sometimes considered as a companion piece to the Doryphoros--appears to have shown a more youthful and less athletic development of form. It is not strange that archaeologists have taken great pains to identify, among the numberless works of Roman sculptors, imitations of these two canonical figures, the existence of which was naturally a.s.sumed from the great celebrity of the Greek originals. The scholars Friederichs, Schwabe, Michaelis, Helbig, Kekule, and Benndorf have accordingly discovered six repet.i.tions of the Doryphoros, preserved in Ca.s.sel, Naples, Florence, the Vatican, and the Villa Medici; while several other statues in Dresden, the Louvre, the Vatican, and the Villa Albani have been recognized as variations differing more or less from this type (_Fig._ 216). In like manner, copies of the Diadoumenos have been found in Madrid, in two marbles of the British Museum, in a bronze statuette of the National Library of Paris, and in a relief of the Vatican: all of which are allied in point of conception and artistic character. Still it is inexplicable how these thick-set and muscular forms could be spoken of by Pliny as _viriliter puer_ and as _molliter juvenis_, or by Lucian as graceful dancers; though it is possible that, in these academical studies, the canonical perfection of form decided by Polycleitos was not so well embodied as in the bronze Idolino of the Florentine Museum. The question is far from settled, and it should not be forgotten that eminent authorities doubt this origin, Conze imputing them rather to the school of Cresilas, while Petersen even maintains the type to have been a Roman invention.
An Amazon in a quiet pose gave Polycleitos an opportunity for portraying a female form of muscular development, yet of typical beauty. It is not difficult to believe that this statue was adjudged even superior to the similar productions of Pheidias, Cresilas, and Phradmon, which could hardly have been the case if the subject treated had been a deity or a figure of momentary action. (_Fig._ 217.) The artist could even better follow his academic aim in the two Canephorae--basket-bearers--whose quiet pose and want of inner expression were so well suited to display an outward, formal beauty and correctness of modelling. But the Astragalizontes--the boy throwing dice of knuckle-bones--which, according to Pliny, was the most perfect work of art in Greece, should not be imagined in an excited, striking situation, or as a street scene conceived with a truthfulness to nature characteristic of Murillo, but as representing the consummation of boyish beauty.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 217.--Amazon, after Polycleitos.]
When Quintilian says that Polycleitos elevated the human figure above what is seen in nature, and yet, contrary to Pheidias in his statues of the deities, had not attained to the majesty of the G.o.ds, this signifies that he had not so fully represented the divine nature. His devotional images are few and without especial fame, with exception of the colossal chryselephantine Hera in the temple between Argos and Mykenae. The G.o.ddess, seated upon a throne, was draped in garments of gold, with only the head and arms bare; the sceptre in her right hand was crowned with the cuckoo, symbol of conjugal fidelity, and in her left was a pomegranate; at her side stood Hebe, the work of Naukydes, the master"s best a.s.sistant. As the Pheidian head of Zeus has been recognized in the mask of Otricoli, so the splendid colossal mask of the Ludovisi Juno (_Fig._ 219) has been referred to an original by Polycleitos. But it is probable that the head of Hera, in the museum at Naples (_Fig._ 218) came nearer to this original (Brunn). Though it be a.s.serted that all the heads of Zeus may be referred to the complete and established type of Pheidias, the ideal of Polycleitos, by no means divine, renders it doubtful whether his Hera acquired a similar position among the succeeding representations of that G.o.ddess.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 218.--Head of Hera, in Naples.]
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 219.--So-called Juno Ludovisi, in Rome.]
The effort after perfection of form sufficed to make the master of Argos a pre-eminent teacher; yet none of his many direct scholars, with the exception perhaps of the before-mentioned Naukydes, acquired such fame as the a.s.sociates of Pheidias, perhaps on account of this very schooling and discipline, the rigid constraint of a canon fettering the wings of artistic individuality. We are not able to judge how far this tendency was furthered during the short period of Theban ascendency by the somewhat later branch of the Theban school, although, among many others, the Theban artists Hypatodoros and Aristogeiton were of considerable importance. The groups consecrated at Delphi about 380 B.C. were of particular interest; they represented the advance of the Seven against Thebes, and the successful repet.i.tion of the invasion by the sons of those warriors. It was not until Lysippos, an indirect scholar of Polycleitos, in his desire to represent men as they should be, had raised himself entirely above the canon of his master, who aimed to show them as they are, that another artist of the first rank appeared.
Examples from the workshop of Polycleitos still exist, though unfortunately scarcely recognizable in the mutilated fragments of sculpture from the Temple of Hera, discovered by Rangabe and Bursian in 1854--works which were doubtless executed under the direct guidance of the Argive master, as those of the Parthenon were under that of Pheidias.
[Ill.u.s.tration: Fig. 220.--Metope of the Southern Temple upon the Eastern Plateau of Selinous.]
The influence of Attica and Argos not only prevailed in Greece proper, but made itself felt even in the most remote colonies. The Zeus upon one of the metopes of the southern temple on the eastern plateau of Selinous (_Fig._ 220) may have been developed from the figures of Zeus by Ageladas, and suggests the sculptures of the Olympian temple which was completed about the same time. This metope represents Zeus fascinated by Hera upon Mount Ida (Il. xiv. 300), and the artist, in his figure of the G.o.d, has surpa.s.sed his former efforts, but the Hera is harder and more antique. The other well-preserved metopes of this temple--one of which shows a Heracles in strife with Amazons, and the other Actaion lacerated by dogs--though not without provincial weakness, have an unmistakable affinity to those of the Theseion. These were nearly contemporaneous, but an entire generation later there appeared at Messene, in the most remote part of the Peloponnesos, the sculptor Damophon, an artist decidedly of the Pheidian style, on account of which he was called to restore the Olympian statue, already warped and disjointed. Although a sculptor of ability, it would seem that he did not entirely withstand the current of a new direction in art; besides the statues