A HISTORY OF SCULPTURE

APOLLO:

AN ILLUSTRATED MANUAL OF THE HISTORY OF ART THROUGHOUT THE AGES, BY SALOMON REINACH, MEMBER OF THE INSTITUTE OF FRANCE, TRANSLATED BY FLORENCE SIMMONDS

M. Reinach’s manual has been welcomed with enthusiasm in every European country. It has been translated into every civilised tongue. Never before have the treasures of all the great galleries been laid under such contribution, and thus M. Reinach’s book claims a distinctive place among students’ manuals. The new edition has been revised and corrected throughout by the author with the utmost care. Some new illustrations have been added, certain unsatisfactory blocks have been replaced by new ones, and the bibliographies have been expanded and brought up to date. Interpolations in the text in connection with English works of art or artistic possessions are added by the translator and approved by the author.

“To criticise it would be much the same as to criticise one’s ‘Bradshaw’—it is unique and it is a necessity.”—Bookman.

New and Cheaper Edition, with over
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The Virgin

From Michael Angelo’s “Pieta”, St. Peter’s. Rome.

A HISTORY OF
SCULPTURE

BY
ERNEST H. SHORT

WITH NUMEROUS ILLUSTRATIONS

LONDON
WILLIAM HEINEMANN
1907

Copyright 1907 by William Heinemann

TO
MISTRESS KATIE GIBBS

IN TOKEN OF
THE AUTHOR’S AFFECTIONATE REGARD

PREFACE

Much that might properly occur in the preface of this book will be found in its opening chapter. I there set out the ground to be covered, and define the point of view from which I have treated my facts. These few remarks will, accordingly, be addressed to any who may think that a work bearing the title “A History of Sculpture” requires a word of introduction.

My justification for the title and, indeed, for the work as a whole, is that I have not attempted to write a new text-book. In my view, all great art is essentially national art. It can therefore only be understood in the light of national and international history. For this reason, I have given much more attention to the artistic interpretation of historical events and social circumstances than most, historians of the arts have deemed necessary. Throughout I have written from the standpoint of one who believes that the great schools of sculpture were created, not, by individuals of genius, but by the peoples to whom they appealed. A work written on these lines can fairly claim to be “A History of Sculpture.”

This general scheme has entailed several consequences. I am conscious that I have dealt curtly with pre-Hellenic art—particularly with that of the Mycenæan age. My reason is that ivory work and goldsmithery, by which Mycenæan art can best be illustrated, do not come within the scope of the book. References to such schools as the modern German and the American have been omitted in the belief that they would have added little to the strength of my main argument. For the same reason I have devoted comparatively little space to biographical details concerning individual artists—even of the first class—and have referred to only the most characteristic of their works.

I trust, however, that I have mapped out the main facts which are essential to a right judgment in sculpture. The list of books will indicate sources of more detailed information about particular schools and artists.

Seeing that I have dealt with general propositions rather than particular facts, I have not burdened my pages with continual references to “authorities.” Any of my readers who regret the absence of the “notes” so dear to many Englishmen, will, I am convinced, be out-numbered by those who will welcome this small relief. I have purposely confined my bibliography to small limits, and, as a rule, have only included books likely to be of use to English readers. I have taken care to choose those which are well illustrated.

In the absence of “notes” and an extensive bibliography, I can only make a general acknowledgment of my obligation to the many writers who have dealt with various aspects of the art. I wish, however, to record the deep debt of gratitude I owe to my friend, Dr. Emil Reich. I am indebted to him for that broad, large-hearted view of general history which is essential to the right understanding of any art. With his name I should like to couple that of my wife, upon whose sympathetic help I have relied from first to last.

I have to thank my father, Mr. Charles Short, and Mr. Edwin Preston, for their kindness in reading my proofs, and Mr. H. L. Weinberg for his help while this book has been passing through the press.

Ernest H. Short.

6, Pitt Street,
Kensington.

CONTENTS

LIST OF PLATES

PART I
HELLENIC SCULPTURE

CHAPTER I

THE RISE OF GREEK SCULPTURE AND THE
ATHLETIC SCULPTURES OF GREECE

Nowadays sculpture is not an acknowledged queen in the Tourney of the Arts. The writer who has thrust her colours into his casque and would break a lance on her behalf, struggles for some unstoried damsel about whose very existence he has been playfully twitted by the champions of the reigning beauties.

Rightly considered, art is but a form of speech—sculpture speaking through words formed from chiselled marble and moulded bronze. Such a language can only have lost its meaning if the men of to-day differ fundamentally from those of the past. But is this the case? Can any one doubt that human thought and action are ever substantially repeating themselves, since men and women are at all times actuated by substantially the same passions? The twentieth century simply requires to realise that sculpture throbs with the thought and emotion astir in itself. Though it cannot be claimed that the art is popular in the sense that music and painting are popular, our firm conviction is that its peculiar thrill only needs to be felt, for sculpture to become as widely appreciated as the sister arts. Dancing may be a lost art; we are assured sculpture is not.

Under these circumstances, honesty compels us to preface this book with a confession. It is a history of sculpture with a purpose. It seeks to entice a few men and women into the belief that sculpture is, essentially, a living art. Its one object is to marshal the evidence in favour of the proposition that the marbles and bronzes of the great sculptors are not dead things which may well be left to gather dust in national museums and unfrequented corners of public galleries.

Though marble and bronze have not lost their potency, it would be folly to regard all sculpture as equally vital. Much has only an archæological or antiquarian interest in these latter days. Consequently, though building from the bricks of the past, everything which has lost its meaning for the men of to-day will be ruthlessly excluded. Our purpose is to write a history of the art itself, to show how its various manifestations arose from social and political circumstances, to trace the emotions and thoughts which stimulated the artists to produce their greatest works and to gauge the action and interaction which created the various national styles. On the one hand is the sculptor expressing what appears to be his own thoughts and emotions. On the other, the men of his country and time providing him with the raw material of thought and feeling, and compelling the production of works which could never have seen the light had he dwelt on a column in the desert after the manner of some Alexandrian mystic. Nor is this all. In addition, there is the influence which the sculptor exerts upon those around him, and particularly upon his fellow craftsmen. Out of the reciprocal modification arises a body of sculptural production, endowed with a definite national style.

The task of estimating these actions and counteractions and their effects cannot be an easy one. It calls for heart as well as mind, both from writer and reader. It would be fatal to treat the bronzes of Polyclitus, the marbles of Phidias, Donatello, and Michael Angelo, as too many historians do the documents from which they presume to create the past. Even if political history can be profitably reduced to a dull catalogue of charters and enactments—which we deny—the history of an art cannot. That must take human passion and emotion into account, and must be written by those who are not afraid to feel or ashamed of their feelings. From any other standpoint, art becomes divorced from life. The reader is denied a glimpse of its most potent force—its mysterious power of arousing echoes in his own heart.

Fortunately, the ground to be covered is pregnant with interest. The story of the meteoric rise of the art in Greece, so sudden that a paltry half-century separated the dead work of the sixth century from the vitalised marbles of the Parthenon, will be followed by an account of the “Golden Age,” in which sculpture expressed the whole nature—physical, mental, and spiritual—of the most complete men who have ever lived. Thence to the art of the Alexandrian and Roman Empires, leading up to the great revival of sculpture in the city states of Northern Italy. Finally, a consideration of the sculpture of Monarchical, Imperial, and Republican France will lead up to the works of our own time and the final problem—how near such a sculptor as Rodin is to assimilating and expressing the strange and wonderful experiences arising from the stress of modern life.

In the nature of things all our correlations will not be equally exhaustive or correct. The philosophical method is more open to errors arising from individual prejudice than the more strictly scientific one, which is content to collect and group examples. In some cases, moreover, peculiarities of style and subject will depend upon circumstances extremely remote from present-day experience, and, therefore, peculiarly difficult to express adequately. Nevertheless, we hope to suggest a method, and to lay a foundation upon which our readers will be able to build. Though we shall base our generalisations upon a comparatively few examples, we shall seek to provide niches into which practically all the greater works of sculpture can be fitted.

THE EARLY BEGINNINGS
(1000 b.c. TO 550 b.c.)

Bearing in mind that our only concern is with what may be termed “vital sculpture”—art with a message for the twentieth century—we may ask, where should a beginning be made?

Unfortunately, the art of sculpture, unlike history, has never been blessed with an Archbishop Ussher willing to vouch for the day and hour of its birth in some year after 4004 b.c. As a craft, of course, sculpture dates from the very earliest times. While the prehistoric painter was scratching his first rude picture in the sands about his doorway, his sculptor brother was whittling a stick into the semblance of a human figure, or roughly moulding the river clay to his fancy. The results interest the archæologist, and rightly find a place in our museums rather than in our art galleries. But they are not what we have in mind when we speak of “paintings” or “sculpture.”

How far then must we go back to find the birth of the art of sculpture? In other words, when did man first awaken to a sense of the real beauty of human form; and, under the impulse of this feeling, when did he first seek to perpetuate the fleeting beauties he saw around him, and the still more fleeting imaginations which these beauties evoked? Where must we begin if we would determine the various human influences—social, political, and religious—which have determined the course of sculpture as an art?

The man in the street answers readily enough—and he is quite right—“Fifth Century Greece.” He is satisfied that, speaking in general terms, it was not until after Marathon and Salamis that

“Human hands first mimicked, and then mocked With moulded limbs more lovely than its own, The human form, till marble grew divine.”

The average man, who has none of the yearnings of the archæologist, sees the interest of some of the plastic art of the earlier civilisations. He even grants it a certain beauty. Yet he knows that it is not what he expects to find in a gallery of sculpture. In Babylonia, the art was too closely identified with architecture to ever attain a vigorous independent growth. In Egypt, the conventionalities that resulted from the influence of an all-powerful priesthood and an extremely narrow emotional and intellectual experience, proved too strong for the native sculptor. The brilliant civilisation that existed during the second millennium in pre-Hellenic Greece and the islands and coasts of the Ægean, was too short-lived to allow of any art reaching maturity. It was only when the final defeat of the Persians permitted the Greeks to devote their great intellectual gifts to the task that the workers proved the full capabilities of stone and bronze as mediums of emotional expression, and “marble grew divine.”

But the efflorescence of the sculptor’s art in fifth-century Greece can only be realised by reference to the efforts of an earlier age. In comparison with poetry, sculpture developed late in Greece. Homer had lived and died. His epics had been chanted by the minstrels of the feudal courts for hundreds of years; but it was not until the tribal organisation became weakened, and the Greek trading and manufacturing cities arose, that men looked to marble and bronze to give material form to their fleeting imaginations. The case of Greece is, however, typical. The sculptor, like the dramatist, needs the atmosphere of a city and the vivifying effects of a city’s ever-changing influences to kindle the vital spark. Both are inspired, not by the appreciation of the few, but by the homage of the many. So long as the Greek husbandmen met by tens to honour Dionysus, the god’s feast was the occasion of a rude medley of rustic song and dance. When thousands gathered in the theatre below the Acropolis at Athens, an Æschylus showed that an art, using the same elements, could sound the depths of all hearts and imaginations. So, in the spot where a few rustics offered up their prayers and their praises for the increase of their herds, a rude wooden image was sufficient to mark the resting-place of the god. But when the Athenian populace gathered near the shrine of Athene, the goddess was symbolised by the great ivory and gold statue of Phidias.

The earliest Hellenic images were of wood hewn into the rough semblance of human figures. There was no attempt at more than vaguely indicating the limbs. The heavy blocks were, however, covered with richly embroidered dresses which served to hide some of their rudeness. When stone began to be used instead of the more perishable wood, the masons did not conceive the possibility of any great improvement. Yet these painted wooden images were not the first instances of the sculptor’s art in the Ægean peninsula. Six hundred years before, the Mycenæan civilisation in the south of the Peloponnesus and in the island of Crete, which the excavations of Dr. Schliemann and Sir Arthur Evans have recently revealed, had given birth to work far nearer to nature than any produced in the eighth and ninth centuries. But during the years following the so-called Dorian invasion this was lost. Mycenæ, Tiryns, and Cnossus became vague memories—the dwelling-places of mythical kings and heroes—invaders and natives, settling down to an agricultural life in a not-too-fruitful country. The bare necessities of life were hard to come by. There was no leisured class such as alone could support an art like sculpture.

But this is scarcely a sufficient explanation of the extreme roughness of the early temple images of Greece before the sixth century. We still ask why a race in which the artistic instinct was so strong, and which had already inspired a great epic poem, did not produce more natural representations of the deities they had evidently clearly imaged mentally. An answer is suggested by an analogous case in early Egyptian history. Among the temple shrines of the Nile Valley, natural flints have been found that had evidently been selected on account of their rough resemblance to some animal form. Limestone figures have been found alongside these, the workmanship of which is almost as rough. These carved lumps of limestone are rather the result of improving natural forms than of actual modelling. Applying this analogy to the case of Greece, the early temple images seem to have been chosen, in the first place, on account of some fancied resemblance to a human or superhuman figure. The temptation to commit a pious fraud by adding a nostril, or an eye, or a suggestion of drapery would be very great, but it could not be carried too far. Beauty or naturalism were not aimed at or desired.

The suggestion that the extreme rudeness of the early Hellenic religious sculptures was deliberate, becomes still more probable when we turn to the history of Renaissance art, two thousand years after the age of which we speak. At a time when the artists of Italy were lavishing all their imagination and technical skill upon figures of the Madonna, the old symbolic representations of the Byzantine type were still preserved as precious relics in church and cathedral. Of the Italians of his day, for instance, no man realised the beauty of physical form and the possibility of expressing it by means of pigment and brush, more than Guido, the father of Italian painting. Yet he did not worship at the foot of one of his own pictures of the Madonna. Week by week he knelt before the little Madonna della Guardia from the East, black with age as it was. He felt instinctively that, for all the sheer beauty that he was striving to impart to his pictures of the Mother of Christ, they lacked the spiritual appeal of this old work. And so it was long after the time of Guido. Seeing that the Italian worshipper, who saw the most lovely representations of the Divine Motherhood in every church, still regarded the old conventional types with awe, we need not be surprised that the Greek peasant was content to worship the rough wood or stone image which he was told was heaven sent.

If this explanation is correct, the image would be an object of awe on account of the very artlessness which is surprising in a race so gifted as the Greeks. We escape the difficulty of believing that such a temple image as the “Hera of Samos,” in the Louvre, was the highest stage that the craftsmanship and the imagination of the Greek sculptor could then attain.

THE GROWTH OF NATURALISM
(550 b.c. TO 480 b.c.)

The Ionic Colonies in Asia Minor were the first of the Greek-speaking races to acquire material prosperity, and it was there that the sculptor first began to shake off the old conventional shackles. The Ionians were in touch with the civilisations of Babylonia and Egypt, and merchandise from the East flowed through their markets for Greece and the Grecian Colonies in the far west. Sculpture, in which the Oriental influence was strongly marked, flourished there considerably earlier than in Argos or Attica. About the middle of the seventh century b.c. these Ionian Colonies began to influence Greece strongly, and Athens in particular. This is evidenced by the manner in which the Ionic linen chiton, or sleeved tunic, gradually superseded the woollen peplos which the Athenians had worn earlier.

At this time the Greeks were becoming richer; their Colonies continued to demand ever increasing quantities of their manufactures, and to send more and more of the raw materials. The greater cities were able to replace the old shrines of brick and wood, which had contained the wooden images of their gods, by new stone structures. During the second half of the sixth century, temples were erected all over the Greek-speaking world, the ruins of those at Ægina and Selinus still remaining to show us the general type. Sculpture was the twin sister of architecture. Pediments, metopes, and friezes were all adorned with marble groups or reliefs. In Greece proper, the tyrants, who had usurped the power in many States, spent vast sums on beautifying their capitals. Such a one as Pisistratus turned to Ionia for the craftsmen he needed, and, particularly, to the school of sculpture in the island of Chios. Many Ionians skilled in the working of marble from Naxos and Paros settled in Athens, and they instructed their Athenian brethren. With the increasing facility that resulted from the greater number of workmen who could give their lives to mastering its technical difficulties, sculpture gradually lost its conventionalities.

By this time the art had made immense strides beyond the rude wooden images of the earlier age, as can be seen from the well-known archaistic “[Diana],” in the National Museum, Naples. This particular work was executed in Roman times under the influence of a strong tendency to reproduce the prominent characteristics of the archaic style. But though it dates from a time when sculpture was once more falling into lifeless conventionalism, it gives a good idea of the results of the first earnest efforts after truthful representation. The sculptor is not yet master of his material. Note the strange expression known as “the archaic smile,” a direct consequence of the craftsman’s inability to represent correctly the human eye in profile.

DEDICATORY STATUE (ARCHAIC)

Acropolis Museum, Athens

DIANA (ARCHAISTIC)

National Museum, Naples

A number of painted archaic sculptures have been unearthed in recent years on the Athenian Acropolis, which show the originals upon which the archaistic style of the “[Diana]” at Naples was formed. They were buried during the improvements consequent upon the rebuilding after the Persian Wars. Many of these were dedicatory offerings. The increasing custom of substituting such statues for the tripods and craters dedicated in earlier days, did much to provide artists at the end of the sixth, and the beginning of the fifth century, with opportunities for experiment. In such work the artist had only to satisfy the donor. Private individuals were less insistent upon conventional forms than the temple priests. Under these influences the drapery gradually became less angular, and the set smile of the older statues gave place to a dignified repose. The illusion of form became more and more complete, and there was less and less insistence upon the reproduction of the detail in every fold of the elaborate Ionic drapery. In other words, the artist was no longer a slave to his material. He was learning how to make the marble express what he had in mind. The numerous discoveries of these archaic statues illustrate the gradual change and, particularly, the growing beauty after which the Athenian artists were striving. Incidentally, they afford interesting evidence of the practice of painting marble which was general in Greece. From the remains of the actual pigments used, it can be seen that the hair was coloured, and the brow, lashes, pupil and iris of the eye indicated. The borders of the dress too were strongly marked, so that one garment could be readily distinguished from another.

With the growing naturalism even portrait statues became possible. For instance, after the dismissal of the sons of Pisistratus, a group in honour of Harmodius and Aristogiton, who had headed an insurrection against the tyrant, was erected in the Agora by their democratic admirers. When this was carried off by Xerxes, it was replaced by a group, the work of Critius and Nesiotes, a marble copy of which can be seen in the National Museum at Naples. We have chosen the statue of “[Harmodius]” as an illustration of the earliest Greek iconic statuary. It will be seen that it entirely lacks the ideality of treatment which was to be the leading characteristic of the art fifty years later.

THE ATHLETIC SCULPTURES
(480 b.c. TO 400 b.c.)

The magnificent full length “[Charioteer],” reins in hand, excavated by the French Expedition at Delphi, is not only the finest pre-Phidian bronze in existence, but marks the “border line between dying archaism and the vigorous life of free naturalism.” The statue may have formed part of a chariot group set up as a dedicatory offering by Polyzalus, the brother of Hieron of Syracuse, in honour of a victory in the games at Delphi. The entire work portrayed a high-born youth, waiting in a chariot at the starting-post. A companion was at his side, grooms, no doubt, standing at the horses’ heads. The driver’s chiton is gathered across the shoulders by a curious arrangement of threads, run through the stuff in order to prevent the loose garment fluttering in the wind. It dates from about 470 b.c. The bronze is representative of the highest achievements of Greek art before the advent of the three great sculptors of the fifth century. Traces of archaic workmanship are most noticeable in the face and drapery. The arms and the feet, however, are beautifully natural.

THE CHARIOTEER (BRONZE)

Delphi Museum

HARMODIUS

National Museum, Naples

Still the stiffness and conventionality of the archaic period died hard. Even in the works of Myron, whose reputation was established by the middle of the fifth century, there are still traces of archaic treatment, as in the hair. But in such a statue as his “[Discobolus],” with its truthfulness to nature, its rhythmic grace of design and its triumphant mastery over all technical difficulties, we can realise how far the sculpture of his age was ahead of the best work possible fifty years earlier.

The mention of Myron, the earliest artist to benefit by the freeing of the plastic arts from the shackles of conventionalism, brings us upon one of the prime problems of Greek sculpture. Practically, the history of Greek sculpture depends upon the connections which can be established between the art and three leading ideals. The difficulty of really understanding it depends upon the distance we moderns have progressed—pardon us the term—from those three dominating ideas.

“How we jabber about the Greeks! What do we understand of their art, the soul of which is the passion for naked male beauty?” So says Nietzsche. And he proceeds to point out that for this very reason the Greeks had a perspective altogether different from our own. Nothing can be truer; nor can anything be more certain than that this truth must be realised absolutely by all who would penetrate beyond the outer courts of the temple of Hellenic sculpture. But though we cannot look at a Greek statue with the understanding of a Hellene, though classic sculpture is, as it were, written in an alien tongue, the historian can readily enumerate the influences by which the art was fostered, and the ideals which it sought to embody.

The first was a civic pride so intense that no Greek of the best period hesitated to sacrifice all individual considerations for the sake of the common weal. To the true Hellene, life was life in the Greek city-state.

The second was a realisation of the extent and limit of human powers so complete that it left little room for the idea of the extra-mundane God which Christian nations have found so satisfying. The immediate consequence was a religious tolerance so complete that we Christians, who are apt to estimate religious fervour by proselytising energy, too often regard it as proceeding from a mere poetical philosophy.

The third was a love, amounting to worship, for the human physical frame—for the actual bone, flesh and muscle, which make the man.

Every Greek statue owes its greatness to the intensity of the artist’s attachment to one or other of these dominating beliefs. The Panathenaic frieze on the Parthenon was, primarily, the result of the first; the great temple statues of Zeus, Hera, Athena and Asclepius represent the fruits of the second; the glorious series of athletic statues by Hellenic sculptors of every period witness to the potency of the third.

Like most ultimate problems, the puzzle goes back to a question of morality. To-day, virtue is personal, morality is practically a bargain between man and man and between the individual creature and his Creator. We cannot easily realise the position of the fifth-century Hellene, whose moral sense did not depend upon the promptings of an individual conscience, but upon the influence of an unwritten, but unbending, civil code. There was not one such code in Greece, but a hundred and fifty. Each city-state had its own fixed ideals. Greatly as these differed, all agreed that the interests of the individual were as nothing compared with those of the city. And to this all added as the second great commandment, “Thou shalt love thy body as thyself.” To-day, we appoint Degeneration Commissions. In Greece they went to the root of the matter and made a well-proportioned and strong body a prime condition of citizenship. In Sparta every child was submitted to the inspection of the heads of the tribe, whose task it was to decide if any bodily weakness or deformity was present or seemed likely to develop. If so, the verdict was death. At seven the Spartan boy left home and entered the state schools, his life, until he reached manhood at thirty, being a continual round of exercises, athletic and military. And so it was with the fairer sex. The one end of the education and training of a Spartan woman was to give birth to perfectly-proportioned sons. Each girl attended the public gymnasium. Nor were these customs peculiar to Sparta. The maidens of the Greek world had their athletic festivals, under the guardianship of the goddess Hera. A typical example, the Heræa of Elis, was celebrated once in every Olympiad, and was presided over by the sixteen matrons who had woven the sacred peplos of the goddess. The principal solemnity was the race of the maidens in the Olympic stadium. The course, however, was much shorter than that of the Olympian games, in fact a sixth part. The girls were divided into three classes according to age, their prize being the garland of wild olive awarded at Olympia. The victors were allowed to set up statues of honour, and a marble copy of one of these bronzes, often called “[The Spartan Girl],” has come down to us. The forearms have been wrongly restored, but the statue evidently represents a maiden of about sixteen years of age at the starting-point, waiting for the signal. She is clad in the short linen chiton, reaching to the knees.

But to return to the main thread of our argument. The Spartan system was not singular but typical. It is true that no other Greek state called upon its parents to expose their halt, maimed, and blind weaklings on the wild slopes of Mount Taygetus. So drastic a method was only necessary where military considerations were paramount. But every Greek city relied upon the physical fitness of its citizens, and any Greek commander might confidently have followed the example of the officer who stripped the rich robes and jewels from his Persian captives and exposed their unmanly limbs to his company. “Such plunder as this,” he cried, “and such bodies as those!”

The Hellenic belief in the prime importance of physical fitness and the worship of bodily beauty to which it gave rise explain why the school of “Athletic” sculptors, who first shook off the chains which had hampered the progress of the plastic arts, made such an immediate impression. These men appealed to more than the sense of physical beauty. They touched a chord in the Greek heart which was in a very true sense “religious.” An Athenian of the time of Pericles must have inspired Mr. Arthur Balfour when in answer to the query “What do you mean by a beautiful soul?” he replied, “Well, to tell you the truth, my dear lady, I mean a beautiful body.”

The mythological religion of Greece had retarded, as we have seen, the progress of the sculptor. In its early stages the art, of course, owed much to its position as a handmaiden of religion. The first artists found the priests, and still more those making dedicatory offerings at the shrines of the great gods, their chief patrons. When, however, the craftsmen proved the possibility of not only a truthful but even an ideal representation of nature, and were ready to discard the meaningless conventionalities of the earlier stage, these religious influences proved a bar rather than an aid to progress. When a city desired to erect a new statue in its chief temple, it offered the commission, not to the daring innovator, but to one of the old school, or at least to an artist who was willing to confine his experiments to other classes of subjects.

“THE SPARTAN GIRL”

Vatican, Rome

THE DORYPHORUS OF POLYCLITUS

National Museum, Naples

In this plight the sculptor, consciously or unconsciously, sealed an alliance with the worshipper at the shrine of bodily beauty. The results were immediate. After the middle of the sixth century it became customary to erect statues in honour of victors in the national games. They were frequently set up by the victor’s colony or state in the sacred grove of Zeus at Olympia, in honour of their subject’s success. An iconic statue was the peculiar privilege of one who had proved the winner on at least three occasions, but others were erected of a more general character. These portrayed the pick of the youth of the Grecian world in all the varied attitudes of the different sports. No subjects could have offered better opportunities to an artist appealing to a race with the characteristics we have sketched.

Moreover, the circumstances under which his work was given to the world were ideal. Compare the sculpture-rooms at Burlington House with the sacred grove of Zeus at Olympia, compare the average private-view “crowd” with the gathering of Greeks every four years for the Olympian festival, and one can see why men speak of sculpture as “a lost art.”

THE OLYMPIAN GAMES

When the Olympian games started they were confined to the south of Greece, and grew up under the patronage of Sparta. As early as 776 b.c. the meetings determined the chronological system of Greece. A few years later the festival had established itself so firmly in the Hellenic social system that it became the occasion of a national assembly of the Greek-speaking world. At all other times the distinction between Athenian and Spartan, between Argive and Theban, was absolute. During the Olympian games the Greek escaped from the grinding effort to preserve his civic individuality—the price he paid for citizenship in such a state as Athens or Sparta. Under the shadow of Mount Cronus, at the time of the second full moon after Midsummer Day, the competitors and spectators came together from Italy, Sicily, Asia Minor, and the islands of the Ægean. A sacred armistice had been proclaimed by the Olympian heralds in all the states of Greece. The deputies from every part vied with one another in the splendour of their equipment and the value of their offerings to the state of which they were the guests.

Remembering that we are endeavouring to account for the rise of one of the great arts of all time, let us call to mind the scene on the plain between the Alpheus and the Cladeus on one of the five days during which the festival lasted. With one exception—the Priestess of Demeter—there is no woman in the vast assembly. It is the fourth day of the games. The judges can be seen, clad in the purple robes of their office. Near by, in the brilliant sunshine, his naked form standing out in clear outline, is one of the competitors in the Pentathlon. This comprises leaping, running, wrestling, and hurling the spear and discus. All who enter must excel in each. Victory is not certain until three of the five events have been won. The most famous Pentathli are light men—not bulky wrestlers. Of all the competitions, this needs the finest physique and is most calculated to develop that elasticity and harmonious balance which the Greek prizes in his youth. Well might Aristotle call the Pentathli “the most handsome of all athletes.” The youthful figure, on a space raised slightly above the ground, is of pure Hellenic blood. He rests on his right foot, his knee bent and his body leaning forward. In his hand is the stone discus, ten or twelve inches in diameter, which reaches half way up his forearm. In front, in the distance, stands a friend ready to mark the spot where the stone falls. The eyes of Greece are upon the discobolus. His only reward is the right to lay the crown of leaves in the shrine of the god of his native town. Can it be wondered that the artists of Greece were inspired to their grandest achievements by such sights? It would have been strange indeed if their finest works had not included the representations of the winners of the garland of wild olive.

But the truth goes deeper than this. Without such inspirations Greek sculpture would never have risen to the heights it did attain. And without the achievements of the Hellene, can we be sure that Michael Angelo would have ever been more than a struggler? He might have painted the Sistine ceiling, but would he have modelled the [David] or carved the monuments in the Medici Chapel? The festival at Olympia and the gymnasia in every Greek city were surely necessary if the art which depends upon “the passion for naked male beauty” was to come to its own. In no other way could “every limb present”—we are quoting from Schopenhauer—“its plastic significance to criticism and to comparison with the ideal which lay undeveloped” in the imaginations of men. Under circumstances less strenuous the dull anticipation of bodily beauty would never have been raised “to such distinct consciousness that men would have become capable of objectifying it in works of art.”

We have seen that the initiation of the Olympian games was due to Sparta and its Peloponnesian allies. Moreover, the custom of laying aside all clothing for the various sports was first adopted by the Peloponnesians, and only spread slowly through the other Greek city-states. These facts, together with the location of Olympia in the centre of the Peloponnese, suggest why the “Dorian” sculptors devoted particular attention to such subjects as the Olympian festivals offered. In the fifth century Argos was second only to Athens as an artistic centre, and Polyclitus of Argos, who headed “the Dorian School,” was considered the equal of Phidias himself.

The ideal for which Polyclitus worked was the portrayal of the healthy human form in its most complete and harmonious development, and, particularly, the preservation of a due proportion between the various parts of the body. His success may be judged from the fact that his statue, the “[Doryphorus]”—spear-bearer—was adopted by his artistic successors as the standard of perfection of the youthful male figure, and was known as “The Canon.”

The bronze originals of the “[Doryphorus]” and its companion, the “Diadumenus,” which depicts a youth binding the diadem of victory about his brow, have perished. We are therefore compelled to gauge the genius of Polyclitus by the marble copies. There is a famous copy of the “[Doryphorus]” in the National Museum at Naples.

Photo.Holliday, Oxford

MYRON’S DISCOBOLUS

The Ashmolean, Oxford

The chief point of interest in the Dorian school, however, arises from a comparison of the works produced under its direct influence with the better-known examples of the Attic school. Early in the fifth century the school of sculpture located around Argos seems to have been one of the most influential in Greece. The Argive Ageladas, under whom Polyclitus was a student, is credited with having instructed the two other early masters—Myron and Phidias. However this may be, the Argive influence was not all-powerful amongst the Athenian sculptors. The variation between the two schools is more noticeable than the resemblance. And this is of vital interest, depending as it does upon the entirely different mental and emotional atmosphere in the two city-states.

If the two well-known statues of discoboli are compared with the “[Doryphorus]” of Polyclitus, the characteristic differences between the Athenian and Dorian schools are clear.

The standing “[Discobolus]” may well be a copy of the “Pentathlon Winner” of Alcamenes, a co-worker with Phidias, who reached his prime about 420 b.c. It shows the athlete holding the discus in his left hand. He is measuring the ground with his eye, testing the elasticity of his limbs and the sureness of his footing as he does so.

The “[Discobolus]” of Myron represents the Pentathlete in the act of throwing the discus. Lucian speaks of “the discus-thrower, bending into position for the cast: turning towards the hand holding the discus, and all but kneeling on one knee, he seems as if he would straighten himself up at the throw.” The statue is a consummate proof of Myron’s skill in the rendering of vigorous movement. The copies in the Vatican and the British Museum are in marble. In the original bronze the discus-thrower looked back, not at the ground, as in the restoration. The correct attitude can be seen in the recently discovered replica, now in the possession of the Italian Government, or, still better, in the fine bronze cast in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, which dispenses with the disfiguring support necessary in a marble copy.

Both these statues of discoboli are distinguished above all for the rhythm of their composition—a rhythm which is the expression in bronze of the beautifully balanced and magnificently full lives of the Athenians of the Periclean age. Polyclitus invested his figures with a natural vigour and dignity which won for him the suffrages of his Peloponnesian countrymen. But even allowing for the fact that we judge the Argive from late copies, while such originals as the Parthenon frieze remain to witness to the achievements of the rival school, it cannot be doubted that the Athenian ideal was the nobler and its attainment worthier of praise. Nor can we attribute the difference to anything else than the more vitalising atmosphere in which Athenian art was nourished—a fact which will be clear when we have estimated the circumstances which led to the erection of the Parthenon.

CHAPTER II

THE PARTHENON AND THE TEMPLE STATUARY OF GREECE
(470 b.c. TO 420 b.c.)

On the vast canvas of recorded history one half-century has always stood out. The clearer the vision of the observer and the larger his view, the more every line in the composition has appeared to converge upon and lead up to that central point. Ever and again the imagination of man, fascinated by some new beauty, has been tempted away. It has always returned with a new wonder. The advance of knowledge has changed the world’s estimate of this and that part of the glowing record of human action and endeavour. But the relative importance of those fifty years has been preserved throughout the ages.

This, we believe, represents the true position of Athens during the fifth century before our era in the scheme of general history. But a great art is only the expression of a nation’s moods. As the Greek epigram puts it:

“I sang those songs that gain so much renown: I, Phœbus; Homer merely wrote them down.”

We have therefore only to alter a few phrases to arrive at the real position of Athenian sculpture between 470 and 420 b.c. in the scale of artistic achievement. The proposition may need qualification. If so, we may well prepare ourselves for the task by the most generous appreciation of this—the Golden Age of Sculpture.

So much for panegyric. What are the facts? How closely was sculpture connected with the every-day and all-day lives of the Athenian citizens? We shall find that the art was interwoven with all that was most vital in the nation’s history; that its roots struck down deep into the hearts of the people.

The victory at Marathon, which broke the spell of Persian invincibility, and the brilliant sea fight at Salamis, which settled the future course of civilisation in Western Europe, had made Athens the principal city in Greece. The smaller states in her vicinity and the great trading cities of Asia Minor, attracted by the position of Athens as a sea power, joined the Confederation of which she was the leading spirit. Even those which refrained from a political alliance could not withhold their admiration from the men who had done so much to save Greece from the dreaded hordes from the East.

The Athenians had, however, only attained this position at the cost of the destruction of their city. Xerxes had sacked and burnt Athens during the second campaign of 480 b.c. Directly peace was assured the Athenians set to work to rebuild the town. Cimon, the aristocrat, and Pericles, the democrat, vied with each other in ensuring that the new city should outshine the capital of any state in Greece. With fresh markets opening up every year the material prosperity of Attica increased by leaps and bounds. Produce poured in from Asia Minor, the islands of the Ægean, the colonies in Sicily and Italy, and the settlements on the shores of the Black Sea. Directly the absolutely necessary rebuilding had been accomplished and the defences of the town were sufficiently sure, the Athenians prepared to make their city worthy of the headship of the Panhellenic League. In bringing this about they were to do honour to the goddess to whose fostering care they ascribed their victory over the great conqueror of the East. As we have seen, no lack of means hampered the accomplishment of the Athenian ambition.

About 450 b.c. a temple was erected on the south-west of the Acropolis to the honour of Athena Nike—the giver of Victory. A year or two later the colossal bronze statue of Athena was erected in front of the spot where the Parthenon was to be built in the following year.

THE PARTHENON

In the early days of Athens the Acropolis had been a rocky eminence which served as a natural retreat, on which the dwelling of the chiefs was erected with the shrine of the tribal deity. Its precipitous cliffs enabled a body of determined defenders to keep an enemy at bay; so that those living at its foot soon obtained a commanding position among the village tribes of Attica from their ability to offer a place of safety in time of stress. In course of time these tribes became united in the common worship they paid to the Virgin Athena who gave her name to the leading settlement, and all offered their gifts at her shrine in the centre of the fortress when her inspiration gave them the victory. Now, however, Athens was to put the Acropolis to another use. Cimon levelled its rugged plateau, and, by building extensive walls around its slopes and filling in the gaps between the walls and the rock, considerably increased its area. On the top arose the buildings which were to make Athens one of the wonders of the world. The chief of these was, of course, the Parthenon—the temple of the virgin goddess Athena. On this all the genius of Attica was lavished. Ictinus, the greatest architect in Greece, furnished the design. Phidias was by common consent the most fitted to beautify the buildings with the marble groups and reliefs which were now the great feature of every public building in Greece. Under him were placed the most accomplished bronze-workers and stone-cutters of the day. Born about 500 b.c., Phidias was a boy when Miltiades and his eleven thousand Athenians and Platæans drove the army of Darius to its boats at Marathon. Like Sophocles, he may have borne arms at Salamis. He had grown up in an atmosphere saturated with his countrymen’s successes and ambitions. In temperament, the embodiment of the Attic spirit, Phidias was the very man to compose the pæan in marble which should cry his country’s prowess to the world when every Grecian voice was stilled. The others were to carry out his designs for the decoration of the temple, but his own work was to be the great ivory and gold statue of Athena which the Parthenon was to enshrine.

Ten years later (438 b.c.) the work was finished. When the second statue of Athena was unveiled the goddess was found to be no longer the warlike maiden who, spear in hand, led those who bore her name to victory. Phidias’ colossal figure, some forty feet high, portrayed the virgin in her robes of triumph, with the symbol of victory in her hand. From her shoulders hung the ægis wherewith her father Zeus had destroyed his foes, from the centre of which the dreaded gorgon’s head stared out. The face, arms and feet of the goddess were of ivory, the dress being decorated with gold. This statue of Athena Parthenos has been lost to the world since the coming of Christianity to Athens about 430 a.d., but the accounts of classical travellers and some rude reproductions enable us to reconstruct the masterpiece of Phidias, at least in imagination.

The Parthenon itself was built from the golden-hued marble of Pentelicus, quarried from the mines near Athens. Its architecture was of the simple yet stately Doric order. The principal chamber of the temple—the cella—in which the statue of Athena Parthenos stood, was surrounded by a colonnade of Doric pillars. The metopes, or square panels above the colonnade, were filled with groups sculptured in high relief, the outside of the cella being decorated with a frieze in low relief. In judging this it is important to remember that these reliefs stood forty feet above the floor of the colonnade. Colour was added to increase their effect, while the bridles and other appointments of the horses were of metal. The triangular pediments above the porticos were filled with two great groups sculptured in the round.

Throughout the series of sculptured marbles with which the Parthenon was decorated, Phidias’ aim was to illustrate the greatness of the goddess of the Athenians. In the pedimental groups the artist showed Athena’s miraculous birth and her victory in the contest with Poseidon. The eastern pediment pictured Olympus just after the axe of Hephaestus had freed Athena from her father’s head. The virgin stood fully armed by the side of Zeus in the midst of the wondering gods. The design for the western pediment portrayed a scene even more closely connected with Athenian history. Poseidon had claimed the right to give a name to the city of the sons of Cecrops, a demand to which Athena would not agree. It was decided that the one who, in the opinion of Zeus, produced the more serviceable gift for mankind, should secure the privilege. Phidias chose the moment when Zeus had awarded the right to Athena on the ground that the olive tree, which had sprung up on the Acropolis at her command, was of more value to the human race than the horse—the emblem of war—upon which Poseidon had relied.

The carvings of the metopes represented the overthrow of the personifications of the powers of evil of which it was the mission of the goddess of wisdom to rid the world. In some were depicted the victory of the Greeks over the Eastern amazons, in others the victory of the gods over the earth-born giants, and in the rest the contests of Centaurs and Lapiths. They were all in very high relief. It is certain that Phidias had less to do with this portion of the decoration of the temple than with the sculptures in the pediments or the frieze, and the work is of varying merit.

In the low relief on the frieze within the colonnade the sculptor depicted perhaps the most Athenian scene of all—the panathenaic procession. The festival of which this was the culmination was instituted in honour of Athena Polias—the Protectress of the City. Every town in Attica and each colony and subject town contributed its share to the sacrifices in honour of the occasion. On the last day the whole population of the State, some on foot, some on horseback or in chariots, marched in procession to lay the peplos of the goddess in her temple. The concourse included a band of the noblest maidens of the city carrying baskets of offerings, the right to be one of these being the greatest honour to which an Athenian girl could aspire. To adorn the frieze, Phidias imaged this great procession divided into two long lines, running along the north and south sides of the cella respectively. Both met in the eastern face. At this spot the sculptor showed the Athenian maidens with the vessels of sacrifice and the gods, who, though invisible, were among their people on that day. A priest stood in the centre possibly receiving the embroidered robe of the goddess from a little boy. On the right and left were seated the chief divinities of Hellas—on the one side Athena, Hephaestus, Poseidon, and Dionysus, and on the other Zeus and Hera attended by Isis.

“THESEUS”

British Museum

“THE THREE FATES”

British Museum

Enough remains of the various parts of the Parthenon decorations to enable us to judge of the supreme gifts of the artist to whose imagination they were due and under whose direction they were fashioned. An hour in the Elgin room of the British Museum, where the larger part are enshrined, should be sufficient to convince the greatest sceptic. The magnificent group “[The Three Fates]” show the marvellous skill of the Athenian sculptors in dealing with drapery. There is an ideal nobility in such a figure as that familiarly known as “[The Theseus]” which places it on a higher plane of art than either the beautifully proportioned forms of Polyclitus or the rhythmical translations of nature by Myron. The wonderful fertility of invention, which is, perhaps, the most noticeable feature of the whole of the Parthenon designs, would have been an impossible achievement for the steady imagination of the Argive sculptor. It needed the temperament of an Athenian artist working under the inspiration of his subject and certain of the appreciation of his countrymen. It is one of the tragedies of art that one who had deserved the esteem of his fellows so fully did not retain it. Phidias died in exile at Elis. An accusation of misappropriating the gold voted for the statue, together with a charge of sacrilege for engraving his own portrait and that of Pericles on the shield of Athena, caused the great sculptor to leave the city he had served so well. He died about 432 b.c.

So far we have spoken of Phidias, the sculptor, and Ictinus, the architect. Our modern ideas incline us to associate the artist with the work—Wren with St. Paul’s and Raphael with the “Sistine Madonna.” In reality, the foundation-stone of the Parthenon should be inscribed thus: “Pericles and the people of Athens made me.”

A work of art so great, which exemplified the struggles and aspirations of a race so completely, could not but owe the largest debt to the political leader of the State. All the forces of Athens were united to beautify the Acropolis, and these were marshalled, naturally enough, not by an artist but by a politician. The real creator of the temple of Athena was Pericles. He realised that the greatness of his countrymen depended, not upon the breadth of their dominions, but upon the healthy development of every citizen, physically, mentally, and emotionally. He divined that the proud boast “we love the beautiful without extravagance and knowledge without exaggeration” was incompatible with strivings after empire. To engage the Athenian imagination, and to wean it from the road which eventually led to ruin, Pericles bethought him of the erection of the series of monuments witnessing to the glory of the first city of Greece. His was the conception in its entirety, he found the means, and, above all, he never permitted the enthusiasm of his countrymen to flag.

GROUP OF GODS

From the Parthenon Frieze

BOY WITH PEPLOS

From the Parthenon Frieze

These are the chief facts. They prove that the temple of the Virgin goddess and the marbles with which it was adorned, played a part in the life of the fifth-century Athenian, for which there is no modern counterpart. The Parthenon brought heaven to earth. It satisfied the individual Athenian’s craving for light as to his personal destiny. But above all, it stood for those social and political ideals which he estimated far above his own personal wants. It spoke to his soul as the idea of Empire speaks to the patriotic Briton of to-day. The pedimental groups, too, were more than decorations or mere pictures of the great gods; they glowed with a message which we should deem inspired. When the Athenian’s gaze wandered towards the Acropolis—still more when, during some high festival, he stood before the temple marbles—he could forget the perpetual sacrifice of will, liberty and individuality—things which we Europeans deem altogether desirable—and say with all sincerity, “it is worth while.”

THE TEMPLE STATUARY

One thing will have struck our readers throughout the foregoing argument. It has been impossible to avoid a certain tendency towards confusing terms. For instance, stress has been laid upon three factors in Greek life, as exercising an immense influence upon Hellenic sculpture—civic pride, a deep tolerance in religious opinion, and an intense feeling for physical strength and beauty. Yet, directly we have come to grips with these conceptions, they have appeared to be inextricably commingled. The Greek’s pride in his city-state, his absorption in physical beauty, are religious in their fervour and in the way in which they are utilized to uphold a strenuous moral ideal. Again, the actions which are most akin to what we term religion nowadays, closely resemble philosophy in their rigid rejection of everything approaching mysticism.

In relating any art to the social and political circumstances which gave it birth, it is all-important to remember that the distinctions between such terms as science, art, religion, and philosophy are more or less arbitrary. In the earliest times men did not distinguish between any of the four. When the skin-clad dweller in the forests gazed upon the lightning flashing among the oak branches, and imaged the angry ruler of earth and sky, he did not separate the explanation of the natural phenomenon from the symbolical incarnation, or both from the religious belief. Nor was this less so when the human mind rose to more complex conceptions. The Pueblo Indian, for instance, recognizes a Sky-god and an Earth-goddess, the parents of all living things. The Sky-god passes across the heavens with the blazing shield of the sun’s disc in his hand, to vanish beyond the portals of the dark underworld where the spirits of the dead are at rest. This is at once the science, the art, and the religion of the Pueblo Indian. It satisfies two elemental cravings of his nature. In the first place it translates the phenomena of the natural world into terms which his reason can grasp. In the second place it satisfies his yearning for some superior will—we call this God—to which he may attribute the purpose and order which he instinctively assumes in the world.

So it was in Greece. We may be convinced that the Iliad and the Odyssey should be described as art. They are art to our way of thinking; that is to say, to our minds they are clearly more akin to “Paradise Lost” than to the religious poetry of the Jews. But to the Greek they were at once religion and art and philosophy.

Exactly the same remark must preface our consideration of the third class into which the sculptures of fifth-century Greece may be divided—the temple statues, erected to such deities as Zeus, Hera, and Athena.

For five hundred years or more the best elements in the religious faith of ancient Greece had been fostered and sustained by the Homeric poems. These, at least, offered an antidote to the brutal temple myths which had gradually gathered around the names of the gods, the nature of which can be realized from the pages of Hesiod. But the Greeks must at times have hungered for more definite representations of the great gods and goddesses.

In the fifth century, however, the sculptors shook off the bonds of realism, which had prevented the portrayal of such a purely ideal figure as the deity “who dwelt in the heights of the air,” and whose voice could be heard in the rustling of the oak-leaves of Dodona. It was realized that a divine image, as satisfying to the imagination of the Greek as the word-pictures of Homer, was possible. The success of the great artists of the fifth century was instantaneous. Within a short time all the great temples of the Hellenic world were furnished with statues of the deities in whose honour they were erected.

The sculptors were content for the most part to follow the imaginations of the earlier poets. They only sought to realize in the god-like forms their highest ideals of human beauty and dignity. They avoided the example of the Babylonians and Egyptians who had emphasized the unworldliness of their deities by investing them with strange shapes and symbols. The Greek imagination was content to add to the human form a more than human majesty. Gradually these statues became so much a part of their imagination that the Greeks found it impossible to picture the great gods apart from the artists’ portrayals. So widespread was the effect of sculpture on Greek and Roman religious thought that, at length, no other conception of the gods could be formed. In the wall paintings of Pompeii the deities are represented as of the colour and material of statues, the sculptural effect being imitated as closely as possible.

Lucian, too, in one of his dialogues, pictures the assembly of the Olympian deities who are dismayed that men no longer rest upon the faiths of their forefathers. In the course of the dialogue, Zeus orders “that the gods should be seated in order of merit. The gold gods first, then the silver, then the ivory, bronze, and stone,” he commands, “and give preference to any work of Phidias, or Alcamenes, or Myron, or Euphranor, or other artist of distinction.”

The most famous of the religious statues of ancient Greece were erected to Zeus and Hera. Other gods and goddesses were particularly identified with the various cities of Greece, such as Athena with Athens. But for the whole Greek world Zeus and Hera were the recognized rulers among the dwellers in Olympus. The chief temple of Zeus was at Olympia where, as we have seen, the Pan-Hellenic Games were held in his honour. That of Hera lay between Argos and Mycenæ. To these the Hellenic world came from time to time to honour the Father of the gods and his chosen consort. In the inner shrine of each stood a great “chryselephantine” statue—a term used to distinguish the wooden statues, with their veneer of ivory and gold, from the ordinary marbles and bronzes. No trace of either remains to-day. Wood is perishable, and the plunder of gold would doubtless have proved irresistible to the Turk, even had the Christian been scrupulous enough to resist the temptation. Had they been cut from the cold marble it might have been otherwise. They were, however, still in their places in the time of Hadrian, when Pausanias wrote the greatest of all guide-books.

ZEUS

Vatican, Rome

HERA

Terme Museum, Rome

We can picture the great statue of Zeus, possibly the most remarkable creation of the sculptor’s art in Greece. The features of the “Father of the Gods” are majestic, yet not unkindly; the arms and the upper parts of the body are fashioned from the gleaming ivory, the lower limbs being wrapped in the golden mantle. In the days of Pausanias there was a building outside the sacred Grove, which was still treasured by the people of Elis as the workshop in which, for five years, the sculptor wrought the image piece by piece. “Why,” says Pausanias, “the god himself bore witness to the art of Phidias. For when the image was completed Phidias prayed that the god would give a sign if the work was to his mind, and straightway, they say, the god hurled a thunderbolt into the ground at the spot where the bronze urn stood down to my time.” This second-century Baedeker has given us the greater part of our knowledge of the works of antiquity, which are now lost or survive only in Roman copies. He described the statue of Zeus by Phidias thus:

“The god is seated on a throne: he is made of gold and ivory: on his head is a wreath made in imitation of sprays of olive. In his right hand he carries a Victory, also of ivory and gold: she wears a ribbon, and on her head a wreath. In the left hand of the god is a sceptre, curiously wrought in all the metals: the bird perched on the sceptre is the eagle. The sandals of the god are of gold and so is his robe. On the robe are wrought figures of animals and the lily flowers. The throne is adorned with gold and precious stones, also with ebony and ivory; and there are figures painted and images wrought on it.”

The statue of Hera in the temple between Argos and Mycenæ was the work of Polyclitus. It was erected after 423 b.c., when it was necessary to rebuild the shrine of the goddess owing to the burning of the older temple. The goddess was seated on her throne; the crown on her head was decorated with a design of the Graces and the Seasons in relief. Ivory was used to represent the flesh of the “white-armed” goddess, and her rich garments were elaborately decorated with gold, the finish of every detail being even more complete than was the case with the work of Phidias. If the statue of Hera was second to that of Zeus in its suggestion of god-like majesty and repose, it was nevertheless remarkable for its stately beauty. The head, as would be expected from the hand of Polyclitus, was noticeable for the absolute symmetry of every feature. The ripples of hair falling on either side of the central parting gave an impression of dignified calm to the face of the goddess.

The “[Zeus]” of Phidias and the “[Hera]” of Polyclitus are the most famous examples of the Greek statues which we have designated as “religious.” The term is, however, misleading. Religious art proper, religious art in the modern sense of the term, did not exist for the citizens of Periclean Athens: “personal” religion—with its intense subjectivity—was a closed book to him. The mysticism—that yearning to be at one with the ultimate reality—which is the keynote of what we moderns deem religion, would have been simply meaningless to the Argive, the Spartan, or the Athenian of the fifth century. No Greek could ever have said with Bacon, “Our humanity were a poor thing but for the divinity that stirs within us.” Such sentiments as those of the mystic, Antony, the Egyptian, would have struck him as sheer nonsense. “He who sits still in the desert is safe from three enemies—from hearing, from speech, from sight; and has to fight against only one—his own heart.” The Greek had no conception of a “personal” and quasi-human intelligence working in and through the human agent. Human speech, human sight, and, above everything, the promptings of the heart, were all in all to him.

We are, therefore, unable to correlate such a statue as the Zeus of Olympia with such an every-day human craving as that for communion with a personal creator and ruler of the universe which we experience. It rather depends upon a desire for an all-embracing interpretation of the phenomenal world. In other words, such a statue might more rightly be called philosophical than religious.

With the rise of the city-states, the growth of an intense desire for all knowledge brought a new light to bear upon the whole content of consciousness. Men began to distinguish between those impressions which came from outside, and those which seemed rather to depend upon emotional interpretation supplied by the self. The deductions that appeared to be correctly drawn from sense impressions came to be regarded as having a greater validity than the rest, and science arose as a sphere of thought sufficient unto itself and governed by its own rules. During the fifth century the scientists strove to relate the phenomena of the senses, now to one natural force, now to another. But they never reached a unity that carried conviction. The general law upon which they seemed to come ever and again was a constant and eternal flux. “Strife is the father of all things,” said Heraclitus.

But while Greek science was growing there were many—say one half of the Greek world—to whom its generalisations were simply uninteresting. They were the men to whom the poet could appeal. The mystery all desired to fathom was deeper than sense. Each felt, rather than saw, that:

“Something is or seems, That touches me with mystic gleams, Like glimpses of forgotten dreams— Of something felt, like something here, Of something done, I know not where; Such as no language may declare.”

To such men the “realities” of the scientists were but shadows behind which lay a more abiding truth. The riddle they desired to solve was what relation the fictional realities of the scientists bore to the abiding truths beyond. And the bolder spirits, spurred on by the great intellectual and emotional flood which followed the Persian wars, started upon the quest.

These were craftsmen all—the artists proper. In obedience to some unreasoned desire, these men bethought them to fashion new representations of “the all of things.” They took the ultimate conceptions of life. For example:

“Him, who from eternity, self-stirred, Himself hath made by His creative word.”

They strove to convey, not only the impressions realised by their brothers, the scientists, but the emotions astir in their own hearts. What matter if the scientists proved these “ideal types” to be mere lies. The artists felt that the unconscious criticism of nature revealed truths far beyond those at which the conscious criticism of science stopped.

THE BARBERINE HERA

Vatican, Rome

By the middle of the fifth century the Greek artist had realized that his true task was not to strive to copy the known, but, “hungry for the infinite,” to seek the ideal whose home was in the unknown. The inmost revelations vouchsafed to Greek thought and imagination in the fifth century found expression in the great temple statues. Earlier they had been embodied in such poems as the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” Later they were to find expression in the dialogues of Plato. But between 450 b.c. and 400 b.c. the natural philosophy of the Greek world was embodied in such sculptures as the “[Zeus]” of Olympia and the “[Hera]” of Argos. That is why we call the second half of the fifth century “the golden age of Greek sculpture.” Then, and only then, did it embody all Greek thought; then, and only then, were the workers in marble and bronze inspired to express the passion for physical beauty, the fierce pride in citizenship, as well as the deepest thoughts upon nature and humanity.

The passion for physical beauty found material expression in the great series of athletic sculptures of Argos and Athens. The Parthenon was the outcome of the Hellene’s civic pride. The deepest philosophical beliefs of the fifth-century Greek are to be found in such statues as the “[Zeus Otricoli]” and the “[Hera Ludovisi].” These are certainly the finest conceptions of the great god and goddess which have been preserved to us. Both are based on the statues of Phidias and Polyclitus, though there are traces of a more sensuous and florid taste than would have been possible in the fifth century. In the head of Zeus, for instance, the suggestion of awful power is lacking. The great sculptor working under the inspiration of Homer’s lines: “Spake the Son of Cronus and nodded thereto with swart brows and the ambrosial lock of the King rolled backward from his immortal head and the heights of Olympus quaked,” could not have missed this. The two heads convey all the beauty of the first conceptions, but they lack the serene austerity—the stern aloofness—that we may be sure characterized the work of Phidias and Polyclitus. The fifth-century artists were appealing to men who preserved a measure of unreasoning faith in the gods of their fathers.

The beautiful full length “[Barbarian Hera],” in the Vatican Collection, represents a step further in the emphasizing of sensuous charm, and consequently there is even less insistence upon the severe beauty which the fifth-century sculptor sought to portray. To be understood the statue must be regarded as a work of the fourth century, and be judged by the standards of Scopas and Praxiteles.

The ideal head of Asclepius, in the British Museum, which has been ascribed to Thrasymedes of Paros, the sculptor of the great chryselephantine statue at Epidaurus, is a work bearing a strong resemblance to the “[Zeus Otricoli].” It was found in the Island of Melos, in a shrine dedicated to the Physician of the Gods, hence the title. The expression of the God of Healing, whose worship was so general in Greece at one time that it threatened to become almost universal, is, however, more kindly and human than that of Zeus. It is a beautiful example of the joyousness and sweet reasonableness which Greek sculpture possessed through contact with a system of religious belief which left the intelligence unhampered and the human emotions free. It is true that the religion of ancient Greece lacked the driving power of other and more potent faiths. It was not based upon such personalities as Buddha, Moses, or, greatest of all, the Founder of the faith which eventually Hellenized the Western world. But for a few short years the humane and tolerant religion of Greece was all-sufficient. Any one who would have abundant proof has only to stand for a few minutes before the marbles which sum up and express the Greek belief in an entirely reasonable and beautiful world.

CHAPTER III

THE AGE OF SCOPAS AND PRAXITELES
(400 b.c. TO 330 b.c.)

There is a wealth of worldy wisdom in the saying “Close sits my shirt, but closer my skin.” It reminds us that the relation of the individual to society answers many a riddle. The Athens of the fifth century has furnished us with one great type of individualism—that in which the citizen was willing simply to add his unit to the energy directed by the State. In its sculpture we saw the consequences of a social system which rested upon a foundation essentially unselfish. But, after all, such social altruism is unnatural. Individuality does stand for a dominant passion in humanity. The Athenian communal spirit lasted for a few short years. Then, like many another truly great ideal, it vanished, and with it the school of sculpture to which it had given birth.

After 400 b.c. the Hellenic sculptor found himself in a new world of thought and emotion. The Greek to whom he appealed looked to marble and bronze to express ideals entirely different from those which had been potent fifty years earlier. It would not have been surprising had the sculptor of the later age been overwhelmed by the sense of the achievements of the earlier era. We could have pardoned a half-century of decadent workmanship, while a method suited to the new ideas was being evolved. As a matter of fact, the Greek sculptor passed from one to the other without perceptible effort. The succession of great artists was unbroken.

Nevertheless, the break with the old epoch was complete. Indeed, it will ever be one of the mysteries of art how human craftsmanship could successfully express thoughts and emotions so diverse by the same medium. There was the same sleepless criticism of nature, the same overpowering impulse towards generalisation, which gave the keynote to the sculpture of the fifth century. But the younger school found fresh themes for plastic expression. It drew new passions from the pulsating humanity in the city-states. That the Greek sculptor passed so easily from the one to the other is a sure proof of the natural bias of the Hellenic genius towards sculpture. It shows that for one century and a half, at any rate, Greece was peopled by a race of sculptors. Many individuals lacked the technical resources of the craftsman, but the average Athenian thought in terms of marble or bronze. Denied an outlet in one direction, the natural impulse found it elsewhere. The result was a new melody, a harmony equally perfect—so true is it that the poet-soul of a nation of artists has “but to be struck, and the sound it yields will be music.”

It is by no means easy to distinguish thus strongly between the sculpture of the fifth-century Greece and that of the fourth without, in a measure, appearing to depreciate the one or the other. It is particularly easy to convey some such impression when we have to assert that Scopas and Praxiteles, the typical sculptors of fourth-century Greece, failed to embody in their bronzes and marbles the inmost revelations vouchsafed to the Greek imagination. It is as true that Greece owes to Phidias and Polyclitus the sculpture which is most truly Hellenic, as that we owe to Shakespeare the drama which is most truly English. But the appreciation of the art produced by the England of the twenty years after the Armada does not necessitate our decrying such lyricists as Herrick and Rochester. We know that our literature is the richer for both these elements. We can spare neither the awful pathos of Leah’s recognition of Cordelia, nor Herrick’s “Night Piece to Julia.” We must hold the scales at least as evenly between the art of Phidias and the art of Praxiteles.

In many ways the “[Niobe]” of Scopas and the “[Hermes]” of Praxiteles testify even more strongly to the vitality of the Hellenic genius. Certainly the best work of the fourth-century sculptors appeals far more directly to us. The period is that of the Spartan and Theban supremacy. Athens has practically acknowledged defeat in the struggle for the hegemony of Greece. Instead of the all-pervading pride in citizenship, the Athenian is conscious of an increasing interest in himself as an individual. The old absorption in the ideal citizenship vanishes. For this very reason the sculptor strikes a note more akin to our nature. The cold, almost repellent, beauty of the fifth-century sculpture is replaced by a new and more sensuous grace.

What were the historical circumstances which brought about this entire change in the Greek artists’ outlook upon life? Upon the withdrawal of the calm judgment and imaginative grip of Pericles, the Athenian political system degenerated rapidly. Drunk with the lust for conquest, Athens forgot that no single town could hope to conquer and rule any large portion of the Hellenic world. Under the influence of such firebrands as Alcibiades, Athens pursued the mad phantom of Empire. Defeat was inevitable, and the catastrophe at Syracuse in 413 b.c. was but a prelude to the final disaster nine years later.

There is perhaps no more awful page in the book of human history than that which pictures the scene in the Piræus after Ægospotami, when the last Athenian fleet was destroyed by Lysander in 405 b.c. “That night not a man slept.” Every Athenian remembered the fate of Demosthenes and Nicias at the hands of the revengeful Syracusans. He called to mind the living death of his 7000 countrymen condemned to a slavery in the stone quarries of Achradina. Now that the final catastrophe had come, his memory must have carried him back to his vote in 428 b.c., when the Assembly ordered the execution of the whole adult male population of Mytilene and Lesbos. He recalled the sentence passed upon the inhabitants of the rebellious Melos, which ended in the death of every man of military age. As these thoughts crowded in, each man must have asked if the gods would save him as they had saved the men of Mytilene, or whether his fate would be the death he had meted out to the soldiers of Melos and that of his wife and children the slavery that had befallen the rest of the islanders.

No pleasant picture. But it is to these events that the world owes the sculptures of Scopas and Praxiteles.

Accepting, as we do, the dictum of Pericles, “Athens is the school of Hellas,” we have no hesitation in turning to her social and political history for an explanation of the essential difference between the sculpture of Greece in the fifth and the fourth century. The term “Athenian” cannot be used at will for “Hellenic.” Every city and state in Greece contributed something to the Hellenic genius. Each added its quota to the fund of intellectual and emotional experience upon which the great Greek artists drew. In these 150 city-states all types of political institutions and social customs flourished. Some developed their citizens in one direction, others in another. Men of all types were created. But Athens alone absorbed and utilized all the artistic energies generated in the Ægean peninsula. In the Athenian character alone do we find those traits which, for want of a better name, we may term Pan-Hellenic.

The first effect of the shattering of the imperial dream was to scatter Athenian culture broadcast over the Hellenic world. The store-house of Athenian genius was opened to all. The typical Greek of the new era was the cosmopolitan Xenophon. The ideal of Pericles, “my state right, or my state wrong, but my state, right or wrong,” was sadly out of date. Phidias was an Athenian, born and bred. His life-work was for Athens, and the one thing that Athens shared with Greece—the worship of Zeus. But Scopas was a Parian by birth and an Athenian only by adoption. He worked everywhere and for anybody—as a young man in Tegea; as an old man in Asia Minor upon the great mausoleum erected by the Ephesian Artemisia to her Carian husband.

THE MAUSOLEUM CHARIOTEER

British Museum

For thirty years after Ægospotami, Sparta, with the help of Persia, ruled Greece. After the peace of Callias in 371 b.c. came the domination of Pheræ and Thebes, and the military supremacy of Epaminondas. During all this time Athens looked on. Her commerce had suffered little. The wealth of her capitalists had rather been increased than decreased by the abandonment of the luxury of empire. But if the material difference was small, the psychological difference was immense. Whereas Demosthenes could cry of the Athenian who had fought at Salamis, that he believed himself “not born to his father and mother alone, but also to his country,” the State in the fourth century came to be regarded as a joint stock corporation, to be bled for the benefit of its most noisy members. Mercenaries took the place of citizen soldiers in the army of the State. Regardless of the necessity for providing against emergencies, the citizens voted themselves largesses from the public funds. A popular statesman was the man who lessened the cost of public administration, and so could distribute ever increasing dividends of festival money to the proletariat.

This new regard for the individual was entirely foreign to the ideals which had dominated Hellas fifty years earlier. Each man began to realise that apart from citizenship there was an entity which also claimed attention, an “I” with passions and emotions which required satisfaction and called for artistic expression. The sculptor no longer rejected those subjects which derived their interest from the successful expression of individual emotion.

THE AGE OF SCOPAS
(400 b.c.-350 b.c.)

Scopas was the first artist to realise the new necessity laid upon the plastic arts. He was the chief architect of his day, and in his work we can trace the effect of the new ideas before sculpture was divorced in great measure from architecture. We have already mentioned his association with the Mausoleum of Halicarnassus—one of the “Seven Wonders.” The Carian ruler Mausolus died in 353 b.c., leaving his widow Artemisia to rule. She determined to erect a great monument to his memory, and impressed the best known artists of Magna Græcia into her service for the purpose. The restoration by C. R. Cockerell in the Mausoleum Room at the British Museum, or, still better, that by Oldfield (The Antiquary, vol. liv., pp. 273-362), give some idea of the great pyramidical building, glowing with colour, which stood on a lofty basement by the harbour side. The whole was surmounted by a great chariot group by Pythis, containing the heroic figure of Mausolus, possibly accompanied by Artemisia, after the fashion of Zeus and Hera in the chariot of the gods.

To the art historian, however, the most interesting feature is the frieze. The principal subject of the existing fragments in the British Museum is a fight between Greeks and Amazons. But the most beautiful section is perhaps a sadly-mutilated slab from a portion of the frieze whereon was pictured a chariot race. It is known as the “[Mausoleum Charioteer].” Nothing could bring home more clearly the immense strides Greek art has made than a comparison of this tiny marble fragment with the “Bronze Charioteer” from Delphi, sculptured about one hundred and twenty years earlier. The Mausoleum figure is also clad in the long close-fitting robe of his calling. But every trace of conventionalism has vanished. Even the calm restraint with which an Alcamenes would have treated the subject has gone. Instead we find a passionate intensity which is altogether new. As Mr. E. A. Gardner reminds us, the “[Mausoleum Charioteer]” might well be of the company described by Shelley, who:

“With burning eyes, lean forth and drink With eager lips the wind of their own speed, As if the thing they loved fled on before, And now, even now, they clasped it.”

THE NIOBE GROUP

The “[Mausoleum Charioteer]” is a beautiful illustration of the more individualistic melody which the early fourth-century sculptor drew from the great orchestra of Greek genius. But we can gauge the effects of the new sympathies still more clearly in the celebrated “[Niobe]” group. Even in classical times it was a moot point whether its author was Scopas or Praxiteles. Probably the question will never be settled. Modern criticism, however, generally favours its attribution to Scopas. The group certainly contains all the characteristics which we have associated with his influence.

The series was excavated in Rome in 1583 a.d., near the Church of St. John Lateran. It was acquired by one of the Medici family, and placed in the garden of his villa, where it remained until it was removed to its present resting-place in the Uffizi Palace, Florence.

The Florentine “Niobides” are not from the chisel of a fourth-century craftsman. They are probably copies of those described by Pliny as having been brought to the Temple of Apollo Sosianus in 38 b.c. Indeed, other ancient versions of the great group exist, including a magnificent copy of the daughter of Niobe—“The Chiaramonti”—now in the Vatican. The “Niobides” were almost certainly originally designed to serve an architectural purpose. It has been surmised that they formed a pedimental group for a Temple of Apollo in Asia Minor. To judge of their relation to the rest of Greek art, they must be compared with such a pedimental group as that of the Parthenon, and we have, therefore, preferred to illustrate them from the collection of casts at Munich, instead of from the marbles in Rome or Florence. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Phidias was content to allow three or four figures in the centre of the group to tell the story. We do not, for instance, even know whether the “[Theseus]” is a god, a hero, or merely a personification of one of the Athenian rivers. But in the [Niobe group] every figure is concerned with the main theme.

Regarded as an incident in the history of Greek sculpture, the “Niobides” brilliantly illustrate the fourth-century artist’s success in the depiction of human expression and passion. The Theban Queen is the incarnation of the belief that womanhood’s greatest glory is to bring into the world “full-breathed, bright-eyed, and happy-hearted human creatures.” She stands for the Hellene’s agreement with Ruskin’s doctrine that the true veins of wealth are purple—“not in rock but in flesh.” But her proud sense of the glory of motherhood has aroused the ire of the Virgin Artemis. The sculptor chooses the moment when Niobe and her fourteen children are suddenly faced with the dread vengeance of Apollo and the goddess. The unseen arrows have stricken some of the fearful boys and girls. Others are as yet unhurt. A brother supports a sister. The centre of the group is occupied by the unfortunate mother, to whom the youngest daughter has fled in her terror.

These Roman copies of the “Niobides” were carved long after the schools of Pergamus and Rhodes had shown the possibility of a far more realistic presentation of physical terror and bodily pain. But they still retain evidence of the Greek sculptor’s determination not to be tempted beyond the limits set by bronze and marble. A desire for dramatic expression does not interfere with that harmony of the planes which to the purest Greek taste made for perfectly beautiful sculpture. There are none of the nervous suggestions of muscular action whereby later artists conveyed ideas of dramatic intensity. Such figures as Niobe with her shrinking girl rather display a desire to postpone physical to spiritual anguish. Upon analysis, this can be traced to the sculptor’s realisation of the impossibility of expressing the ultra-dramatic in terms of perfect beauty.

THE LUDOVISI ARES

([Page 71])

Vatican, Rome

MENELAUS AND PATROCLUS

Loggia dei Lanzi, Florence

As we look upon the “[Niobe],” we feel at once that so dramatic a theme would have made no appeal to the generation before Scopas. But we must also feel that the fourth century has struck a new note—a note, moreover, to which marble can respond. But what is most wonderful is the magnificent reserve, the perfect moderation, with which the artist has expressed emotions that had been considered beyond the range of the art. The sculptor has not sacrificed that harmony and repose which he regards as essential to the idea of the beautiful.

The group usually called the “[Menelaus and Patroclus]” displays in equal degree this balance between the expression of deep emotion and the perfect moderation which the Greeks regarded as the hall-mark of the truly beautiful. The limitations incidental to marble as a medium for emotional expression are borne in mind. There is no effort to force the note of pathos.

THE AGE OF PRAXITELES
(360 b.c.-325 b.c.)

If Scopas may be regarded as the first Greek to realise that marble and bronze could express the more passionate intensity of feeling which naturally followed the increasing importance of the individual and the individual’s thoughts and emotions, his successor, Praxiteles, must be associated with the second great characteristic of fourth-century sculpture—its lyrical appeal. Greek sculpture had been epic. It had concerned itself with the heroic myths of the race. But as art became every year less a matter of communal concern, it began to voice the growing self-assertion of the individual Greek. In other words, sculpture became lyric.

Almost any fourth-century work would illustrate what we mean, but a beautiful practical example is furnished from the history of Attic sepulchral sculpture.

Any visitor to Athens will remember the numerous dedicatory reliefs, chapels and memorial stelæ still to be seen in situ in the Ceramicus, the cemetery near the Dipylon Gate. Reconstructing the scene at the time of Praxiteles, we must imagine the roads leading from the principal city gates as flanked with such sculptured memorials of the dead. The Sacred Way to Eleusis, for instance, became a favourite site.

To-day the Ceramicus is in ruins, but its monuments still present some of the finest examples of original Hellenic sculpture extant. There is the famous “[Relief of Dexileus].” It depicts with magnificent vigour an Athenian cavalry-man, triumphing over a prostrate foe. Dexileus died in the war which Athens waged unsuccessfully with the Corinthians, so the monument dates from about 394 b.c., the time when the youthful Scopas was at work upon the pedimental groups at Tegea. The beautiful work often called the “Death of Socrates” is only a few years earlier in date. The connection with Socrates is, of course, apocryphal, the subject really being an Athenian pouring a libation. At the other side is the wife, absorbed as was the wont of Athenian wives in some domestic interest—her dress, or her jewellery. The third figure is a young slave holding the vessel filled with wine.

“THE DEXILEUS RELIEF”

Ceramicus, Athens

Neither of the works memorialises any great political or social figure. Nothing could well be more individualistic than a monument erected to an unknown man by his friends or relations. Dating from about 400 b.c., both belong to an age when sculpture was divorcing itself from its close alliance with the State. But the point to be realised is that a few years earlier such works would have been impossible. Sculptors of such power would not have been at the service of mere individuals, however wealthy. Cicero (“De Legibus,” ii. 26) tells that in the period after Solon’s death, the Athenians legislated against elaborate monuments in such cemeteries as the Ceramicus. No tomb was permitted unless it could be made by ten men in three days.

For many years public opinion approved of these sumptuary laws. It was only when the fifth century was well advanced that they fell into disuse. Even then the transition was gradual. The sepulchral monuments were small and stonemasons only were employed. In the fourth century, however, the best known sculptors accepted such commissions. Pausanias, describing the antiquities near the Piræus Gate, says, for instance: “Not far from the gates is a tomb, whereon stands a soldier standing by his horse; who he was I know not, but it was Praxiteles who made both man and horse.”

But the tendency towards an increased interest in the needs of the individual citizen is even more strongly exemplified by the growth of home life. Home life had been sacrificed to public life in the age of Themistocles and Pericles. The victors of Salamis lived in small houses, which were particularly dark and uncomfortable owing to the lack of glass. The poorer citizens lived in a single “cella.” Families of moderate means had two sets of rooms, the upper floor for the women, and the lower set apart for the men. In the fifth century only a few rich men could afford the series of rooms grouped round the two courts which enabled the wealthy Athenian to receive his friends and enjoy some of the privileges of home life. Under the circumstances, we cannot wonder that the Greek left his home early and preferred the gymnasium or the market-place, the law courts or the covered corridors. A few met in the courtyards of their friends but, as a whole, social life in Athens was public.

In the fourth century, however, the richer members of the community began to build magnificent houses in the suburbs of Athens. Attempts at decorating the interiors followed as a matter of course. It is said that Alcibiades was the first Athenian to try, calling in Agatharchus, the painter, to his aid. The poorness of the light in the majority of the houses doomed the painters’ efforts to failure, but the sculptor had a better chance. His work could be used, at any rate, for the decoration of the courtyards. He was employed to supply portrait busts and a host of single figures, which, appealing as they did to the individual taste alone, would have had no place in the art of the preceding century.

The range of subjects was still further increased by the popular sculptor being no longer chiefly engaged upon huge chryselephantine statues of deities, in which it was manifestly impossible to depart far from the popular types which had been fixed by sculptors like Phidias and Polyclitus. Moreover, the sculptor was no longer compelled to spend most of his time in filling a triangular pediment, a square metope, or shaping his design to the long narrow frieze. The consequence was the discovery of numbers of mythical subjects capable of objective realisation in bronze and marble.

The “[Hermes]” is a beautiful example of the use such a sculptor as Praxiteles made of the new opportunities. The place it occupies in the history of the art is unique. Whereas most sculptures of its class are Roman copies, the “[Hermes of Praxiteles]” is an undoubted original. The marble was found at Olympia in 1877 a.d., on the very spot where Pausanias recorded having seen it. The find was preceded by the identification of a dipteral temple with an Heraion (Temple of Hera) also described by Pausanias. But this was of small interest compared with the statue which the German excavators discovered embedded in a fragment of wall. There was never any doubt as to its identity. It was clearly “the Hermes of stone, carrying the infant Dionysus—a work moreover by Praxiteles”—as Pausanias had recorded.

Every one has seen a cast of the statue. The god is carrying the babe Dionysus to the nymphs. He has stopped for a moment’s rest and is amusing his little charge, may be with a bunch of grapes held in the right hand. The perfect grace of the figure and the pose are essentially Praxitelean. The work illustrates the softer and more sensuous manner of imaging the lesser divinities which arose in the fourth century. In this case the youthful god in the flush of early manhood must be contrasted with the “bearded” Hermes of the age of Phidias. After the time of Praxiteles there was no reversion to the earlier type. He did for Hermes and Apollo what Phidias and Polyclitus had done for Zeus and Hera.

The influence of Praxiteles can be traced in a hundred kindred works produced during the next few centuries. In particular, it led to a fuller appreciation of the value of marble as a medium. Previously most of these single male statues had been bronze. The use of marble in turn led to increased technical skill. Take Praxiteles’ treatment of the hair in the “[Hermes],” for instance. Note the massing of the locks, without an attempt at the realistic representation of the details, and the skilful use of the play of light and shade which such free treatment makes possible.

THE INFLUENCE OF GREEK WOMANHOOD

But even these factors, potent though they were, do not account for the whole of the increased scope afforded to the fourth-century sculptor. We have passed in review various circumstances, political, economic, intellectual and moral. But we have said nothing of a good half of Greek society—the women. Yet the influence exerted by the fairer sex, negatively upon fifth-century, positively upon fourth-century, sculpture was all-important. It must not be overlooked if we would gain a complete understanding of either phase of Hellenic art.

Speaking generally, women occupied a place in Greek society which cannot be readily illustrated from our modern experience. The earliest Greek women is pictured in the pages of Homer. The typical wife is Penelope; the typical virgin is Nausicaa. To Homer, the wife is the trusted friend of her husband. The current belief is that

“The woman’s cause is man’s: they rise or sink Together, dwarf’d or god-like, bond or free.”

HERMES OF PRAXITELES (DETAIL)

Olympia

But prosperity brought a change. At the time of the rise of sculpture—in the early days of Pericles—the interests of the citizens were entirely political. At no time, perhaps, in the history of the world have men and women had so little in common. The duty of an Athenian wife was to stay at home, to order the house economically, and to control the numerous slaves. Wedded, perhaps at fifteen, after a childhood spent in strict seclusion, she could not hope to be a companion to the active-minded Athenian. “The best woman,” said Thucydides, “is she of whom least is said, either in the way of good or harm.”

Towards the end of the fifth century, the political interests became less absorbing, as we have seen. Private affairs began to occupy the major part of the wealthy citizen’s time. It might have been expected that the Athenian wife would have been gradually reinstated in the position of intimate companionship she had occupied before city life became general. But the custom of centuries was too firmly rooted. When the Athenian once more looked for the pleasures that might arise from social contact with his womenfolk he found his wife entirely without charm.

Naturally enough he turned to the Hetaerae. The word is too thoroughly Hellenic to be translated. Demosthenes distinguished the class from the rest of the Athenian women when he said:

“By means of wives we become the fathers of legitimate children and maintain faithful guardians of our homes; the Hetaerae are meant to promote the enjoyment of life.”

The “female friends” were usually captives made in war or, at any rate, strangers who found Athens a convenient market for their physical and intellectual charms. Few Athenian women dared to join their ranks. Every Hetaera was an expert dancer. She could play on the flute or lyre. Her wealth was often considerable. The boast of Phryne—the greatest feminine influence of her day in Greece—did not appear absolutely beyond reason. Yet the courtesan offered to rebuild the walls of Athens at her own cost. Not infrequently the Hetaera’s mental culture was sufficient to enable her to consort with the greatest philosophers and statesmen. Pericles himself imperilled his position in the State by his dealings with Aspasia.

We are not called upon to pass judgment upon these social customs. Our task is rather to estimate the influence of such a state of society upon the child of his time—the artist. Looking the facts in the face, we have simply to note that the old demand for manly vigour and civic unselfishness was giving place to a far less strenuous ideal. The Athenians could applaud a Phryne who at a festival at Eleusis, let down her hair and descended into the sea in the sight of all the Greeks, after the manner of a sea-born Aphrodite. Instead of Zeus and Hera, men looked to Dionysus, the leader of the revels; to Apollo, the chief of the Muses; to Aphrodite, the Queen of Desire, who held in her cestus all the magic of passion.

The greatness of an artist does not rest upon opposition offered to current civic and social ideals. On the contrary, it depends entirely upon the perfect expression which he gives to the body of emotions experienced by the men and women around him. The fame of Praxiteles is due to his complete identification with the paramount influences of his age. A true Athenian, the refined sensuality of his style picked him out as the artist to give objective form to the popular imaginations.

THE EROS OF CENTOCELLE

Vatican, Rome

Praxiteles himself was closely associated with the Hetaera, Phryne. One of his most renowned works was the “[Eros]” which he carved as the artistic expression of his love for the beautiful courtesan, and which was dedicated by Phryne at Thespiae about 360 b.c. The Epigrammatist said of the Thespian “[Eros]” that it “excited transports of love by hurling, not darts, but glances.” There have been many attempts to identify this statue with marbles that have come down to us. It has been often suggested that the beautiful torso found at Centocelle, and now in the Vatican, may be a copy. Without dogmatising, we can realise some of the qualities of Praxitelean art from the “[Eros of Centocelle].” We can see the dreamy melancholy with which the artist no doubt invested the graceful and tender form of the God of Love. It is strongly typical of the Praxitelean imagination that Eros is depicted as on the very verge of youth, at the dawn of the first forebodings of passion.

Praxiteles’ “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” is equally associated with the memory of the Hetaera, Phryne. Originally executed for the islanders of Cos, it was refused by them on account of the daring manner in which the sculptor had imaged the goddess—a manner which can be realised from the epigram to which it gave rise.

“The Paphian Cytherea went down to the waters of Cnidus desiring to behold her own image; having beheld it, ‘Alas! Alas!’ she cried, ‘where did Praxiteles behold me thus? I thought only three persons, Paris, Anchises, and Adonis had done so.’”

The people of Cnidus differed from their brothers of Cos. As Pliny suggests, their acceptance of the statue made their island famous. The marble was placed in the centre of a grove of myrtle, and was approached by several paths so that it could be viewed from every side. The Vatican replica of the Aphrodite is the best known copy of the work. It is, however, at present disfigured by the addition of metal drapery which the taste of the last century considered necessary. The Praxitelean design can be realised from the copy at the Glyptothek, Munich, originally in the Palace Braschi. There is also an undraped cast of the Vatican statue in the Victoria and Albert Museum, South Kensington. Our own illustration is from a photo of the Vatican copy taken for the Hellenic Society many years ago.

To the people of Cnidus, the statue was not marble white. The eyes and hair of the goddess were coloured. The drapery and the flesh were delicately tinted. In exactly what manner this was done, we do not know. That such statues were painted is beyond argument. Pliny tells that the painter Nicias assisted Praxiteles. He suggests that the sculptor considered the encaustic additions of prime importance and necessitating the greatest skill. Whatever the purpose of this colouring of statues may have been, it is certain that there was no effort to secure greater realism by this addition. The desire seems to have been to soften the harsher tones of the marble and to increase the decorative effect of the statue by distinguishing the principal masses of the composition.

For hundreds of years after it was set up in the myrtle grove in Cnidus, the “[Aphrodite]” was the most renowned statue in Western Europe. This can only be attributed to the exquisite sense of artistic fitness with which Praxiteles carried out his task, together with the fact that he had enshrined in marble one of the ever potent human passions. Phryne had been Praxiteles’ model. But the statue was by no means a realistic presentation of the erotic beauties of the Hetaera. No fault can be found with Praxiteles’ treatment of his theme on that ground.

APHRODITE OF CNIDUS

Vatican, Rome

Nevertheless the representation of a goddess in the guise of a woman shrinking from the revelation of her beauty to mankind argues the loss of a certain morality. True, the Greek sculptor had never aimed at the inculcation of moral ideas. But in an age before the religious sense of the Greek had become dulled, he would have confined himself to the creation of an atmosphere in which moral ideas could range without friction. The “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” belongs to a time which made no such demand upon its artists. The sculptor no longer believed that he owed a duty to the state in this particular respect. Every work now stood or fell by virtue of its innate truth and beauty.

But Praxiteles was in no sense “a brilliant exponent of decadent art.” On the contrary, his sculptures bear witness to perhaps the most magnificent endowment of the Attic brain—the fineness with which it felt. To-day, we are too apt to regard clarity of thought as the chief attribute of genius. Really genius depends upon the power to call up delicate tones of feeling, of infinite subtlety of texture when compared with the ideas which we often regard as its sole endowment.

Praxiteles has been described as “He who actually blended with his marbles the emotions of the soul.” The phrase is a fitting one with which to close our review of his art. His abiding greatness depends less upon sheer beauty of line than upon the delicacy of the feelings which he made marble convey. The play of the passing emotion on the face of the “[Hermes],” the dreamy passion of the “[Eros],” and the illusive charm with which the “[Aphrodite of Cnidus]” shrinks from the revelation of her beauty—these are typical of what is most characteristic in the sculpture of Praxiteles and his fellow workers. He felt the emotional appeal of the feminine and the youthful male form rather than saw the beauties of line displayed in the new subjects offered for sculptural treatment. It is far from true that the Greek sculptor generally sought for beauty of form to the neglect of all the varied charm that lies in intellectual and emotional expression. This might be said of Phidias and Polyclitus. The insight of the sculptors of the following century into the depths of human emotion, on the contrary, was infinite. Scopas and Praxiteles made marble speak the more delicate emotions of the soul to the last word.

CHAPTER IV

LYSIPPUS AND THE FOURTH-CENTURY REALISTS
WITH A NOTE ON MODERN SCULPTURAL CRITICISM

It needs little knowledge of human nature to realise that the idealisation of sensuous passion, which was the keynote of the art of Praxiteles, could not express the whole nature of a composite civilisation, and particularly the whole nature of a civilisation great enough to mother an Alexander and a Demosthenes. The presence of a more strenuous ideal was inevitable. The body social in this respect closely resembles the individual. To the individual, merely sensual pleasure is rarely entirely absorbing. It is a matter of hours, weeks—months, it may be, then the impulse weakens, and

“Like the snow-falls in the river, A moment white—then melts for ever!”

It would, therefore, have been possible to diagnose the presence of the colder and more self-contained art hard by the warmly glowing art of Praxiteles.

It is to be found in a large class of sculptures which we shall designate as Lysippic. These contain strongly marked characteristics, and a moment’s consideration will show that they must be traced to a social opinion entirely different to that pervading such works as the “[Olympian Hermes],” the “[Aphrodite of Cnidus],” and the “[Eros of Centocelle].”

But if a school of sculpture opposed to that of Praxiteles was an artistic necessity, a reaction against the social circumstances which had rendered a Praxiteles possible was equally sure. The art change indeed witnesses to the social revolution; the social change to the artistic.

Nor is the reaction in any sense the result of a merely passive objection to a dangerous method of living and feeling. Athens was impelled by misfortune into adopting sounder ideals. Such an incident as the sack of the shops in the Piræus by the pirate vessels of Alexander of Pheræ after the battle of Mantinea (362 b.c.) had rudely shaken the self-confidence of the Athenians. At the time, the outrage led to no more vigorous step than the exiling of the Athenian statesman, Callistratus. But these rebuffs reached a climax in 338 b.c. when Thebes and Athens were routed by Philip and Alexander at Chæronea. The impossible had happened. With the victory of Chæronea, the hegemony of Greece had passed to Macedonia—a non-Greek power. The Athenians prepared for root and branch reform. As if to justify the taunt of Demosthenes, “the administration has risen from beggary to wealth, while the Treasury wants sustenance for one day’s march,” such an incorruptible as Lycurgus was elected to the Ministry of the Public Revenue. What is more he was permitted to act. The Navy was increased to 400 galleys. The marble store-house for ships’ gear (the Skeuotheke of Philo) was completed. With grim irony, the cases that lined the triple-aisled arcades were left open for public inspection, “that those who passed might see all the gear in the gear-house.”

It was almost a century since the seeds of decay had been sown in the city-state system. It needed no Demosthenes to prove that with all its faults it was to this system that Athens owed its most enduring glories. It had developed the powers of the citizens to the greatest extent. Faced with the possibility of the absolute monarchy embodied in the power of Macedonia triumphing over the free commonwealth, Athens naturally looked to the past. The rule of Phocion and Lycurgus was the result. It was marked by a closer return to the ideals of the fifth century than had prevailed in Athens since the death of Pericles, a century earlier. Many of the old shrines were restored, and the theatre of Dionysus rebuilt. Aided by the produce of the silver mines of Laurion, Lycurgus was able to rebuild the Lycæan gymnasium and construct the Panathenaic stadion.

But an even more signal proof of the reaction against the selfish policy of the previous fifty years is to be found in the effort made to rid Athens of the mercenary system which was sapping the military strength of the state. After Chæronea the youth of Athens was once more trained to arms. Young men had to serve the state for at least two years. These Epheboi, under the direction of a marshal and ten masters of discipline, wore a common uniform, lived together and dined frugally at a common mess. The system was almost Spartan in its simple temperance. The Epheboi were trained in the exercises of the hoplite. At the end of the first half of their training they gave a public exhibition of athletic and military skill in the Athenian theatre. The ministry of Lycurgus between 338 and 326 b.c. was not a second golden age for Athens. But it was a faithful copy. There was, at least, a partial return to the good old times when Athenian lads ran races under the sacred olives, redolent of convolvulus and whitening poplar, “rejoicing in the sweet o’ the year when the plane-tree whispers to the elm.”

It was in a world dominated by these ideals that Lysippus (roughly 375 b.c. to 300 b.c.), the last of the great Greek sculptors, worked. In place of the less virile type favoured by the age of Praxiteles he aimed at the expression of natural manly beauty. Lysippus moulded his style upon that of Polyclitus. Like Polyclitus, he preferred to work in bronze. The preference is typical of his departure from the style of the Athenian artists who had dominated sculpture during the forty years before Chæronea. Marble had proved the very medium for the portrayal of the softer graces of the human form and the delicate expression of emotion. But it was inadequate for the representation of the more vigorous human forms which Lysippus sought to portray.

Lysippus, however, was no blind follower of Polyclitus. It is narrated that he once said, “Polyclitus made men as they were, but I make them as they appear to the eye.” Lysippus added the truth of expression which the beautifully symmetrical but impassive figures of Polyclitus lacked. He aimed at imparting to his figures a lightness that those of the Argive sculptor wanted.

The Vatican “[Apoxyomenus]” is without doubt the finest statue extant embodying these tendencies. This fine marble was excavated in April 1849 from among the ruins of a large private house in the Vicolo delle Palme in Transtevere. It is doubtless a marble copy of the bronze which was one of the most popular works of art in Rome during the Empire. In the bronze original the supports which are necessary for the marble copy were absent.

MELEAGER

Vatican, Rome

APOXYOMENUS (SCHOOL OF LYSIPPUS)

Vatican, Rome

But what strikes us first is not the resemblance to the athletic sculptures of Polyclitus, but the marked difference. The subject is of the genre order, which in itself denotes a change. Wrestlers were wont to anoint their bodies with oil and besprinkle themselves with fine sand in order to afford a firm grip. Here we see the athlete scraping the oil-soaked sand from his limbs with a strigil.

But the difference goes still deeper. A physique that would serve the State in good stead at any moment was clearly the essential to the youth who posed for the “Diadumenus” of Polyclitus. Above all, there was no suggestion of training for a single event. The “[Apoxyomenus],” on the contrary, rather recalls the system of our own day, in which particular muscle, rather than balanced strength, is the prime desideratum. To-day the athlete never loses sight of the fact that a definite contest has to be won on a fixed date. Mr. K. T. Frost, in a delightful criticism of the “[Apoxyomenus]” from the point of view of the athletic anatomist, couples the work with the well-known “Fighting Warrior” of Agasias, now in the Louvre. “Both,” he says, “have the physical characteristics which we associate with the thoroughbred.” Comparing them with other Greek athletic statues, he shows that the back and trunk in the earlier works depend for strength upon the general solidity of the frame, not on specially developed muscles. This, as he proves, is not the case with the “[Apoxyomenus],” though the steel-like tendons and sinews prevent the resulting slimness from suggesting any lack of power.

MODERN SCULPTURAL CRITICISM

The “[Apoxyomenus],” since its discovery in 1849, has always been associated with the name of Lysippus. It certainly shows all the features which are usually associated with his style, including the small head, the long limbs, and the life-like animation which he strove to express in his figures.

The attribution of these characteristics originally depended upon the interpretation placed upon various references to Lysippus in the classical authors. A passage in Pliny, for instance, speaks of his “Constantia,” and seems to suggest that a sleepless regard for truth in detail was a prime feature of the Lysippic style. When we add to this the passages relating to his pupils, we can scarcely fail to regard Lysippus as the founder of the realistic school, which was opposed throughout the Hellenistic age to the more fanciful and idealistic art based upon the marbles of Praxiteles. When we come to the consideration of the portraits of the Lysippic school, we shall see that realism to Lysippus did not mean exactitude to life. He always sought to add that rhythmic beauty which Nature never supplies, but which every true artist, and especially every great Greek sculptor, is persuaded lies at the root of art.

It was upon such evidence as this that the “[Apoxyomenus]” was attributed to Lysippus. Practically all the well-known and frequently copied sculptures are attributed to the famous sculptors of antiquity upon similar grounds.