Chapter XIII: Part 13

Similar to the transitional position between Pheidias and Scopas, held by the elder Kephisodotos, was the position taken by these two sculptors between the art of Scopas and Praxiteles and that of Lysippos, for whom the studies and innovations in the canons of human proportions prepared the way. Though self-taught, for as a youth he had been a hand-worker in brass, and from this had raised himself to the position of an artist, he was still not without connection with the schools, since he took as his model the Doryphoros of Polycleitos, the academic pattern mentioned above, and also worked in bronze, the material most favored by Polycleitos and the artists of the Peloponnesos. He cannot, however, be called a direct scholar of Polycleitos, whose canon he corrected and even replaced by a new one, better adapted to the artistic aims of the younger masters. The model of Polycleitos was the human body, but Lysippos felt that he must set his ideal of humanity higher than in the average of real examples, because he considered these, in comparison with the perfect figure, to be degenerate and dwarfed. Although he worked with reference to this view, still he developed his types from the real appearances of nature; and when asked by the painter Eupompos of Sikyon for advice as to the best teacher, he pointed to an assemblage of people. He wished to represent man, however, not as he is, but as he should be, and employed only those features which did not fall below the average determined by Polycleitos. His ideal type of the human body became more slender and larger, the size being especially apparent because the head and extremities, which take their proportions from the whole, were made smaller.

Lysippos, however, followed the footsteps of Polycleitos in considering the establishment of a canon as the greatest essential in art, and exercised his powers chiefly in the province of humanity. His Apoxyomenos--the athlete scraping himself with the strigil, a marble copy of which is in the Vatican--is the most celebrated among his statues of athletes and victors. (_Fig._ 230.) In this he seems to have set forth his new confession of faith, in opposition to that of Polycleitos. This aim must have had the most important influence upon portrait-sculpture, the chief field of his activity. It is clear from the accounts of some likenesses of persons long dead, or even legendary, that he fully expressed the character in the features, as in the Apollodoros of Silanion, and did not aim at that over-scrupulous reproduction of details and attention to circumstantial matters which endeavor to attain a likeness by sharp observation of external things, unessential to the whole. This inferior style of portraiture was pursued by Lysistratos, the brother of Lysippos, who formed his figures after plaster casts from nature. Although earlier portraits might have informed the sculptor in regard to the true features of some historical personages, certainly this could not have been the case with Æsop, or the Seven Wise Men, for whose individuality and intellectual tendencies he was obliged to create a characteristic type. In the portrait which he most frequently executed, that of Alexander the Great, it was of especial importance to illuminate the ugly and faulty formation of the monarch’s face by the expression of his powerful character, and to execute it so appropriately that even the likeness was increased by such depth of appreciation. The artist thus produced portraits of the conqueror which differed as much, and as favorably, from the realistic and chance appearance of the king as the historic illustration of a great personage does from the knowledge of that individual in every-day life. Alexander, accordingly, would be represented in sculpture by no one except Lysippos, as he would be painted by none but Apelles. Even that best-preserved portrait of Alexander, the bust in the Capitol, does not suffice to make clear the whole conception of Lysippos. How grand such monumental portraitures really were may be gathered from the account of the group at Dium--afterwards transferred to the Portico of Octavia in Rome--illustrating a scene from the battle upon the Granicos, where twenty-five warriors on horseback and nine on foot were grouped about the king, to which many of the enemy may doubtless be added.

The work next in importance after this was the representation of Heracles by this master. Not in the elevation of the ideal above the human, but rather in the emphasizing of this latter quality, did the Heracles of Lysippos stand in distinct opposition alike to the merely human model of Polycleitos, to the superhuman and godlike beings of Pheidias, and especially to the divinely charming beauty of the Aphrodite and the Eros, as seen in the best creations of Scopas and Praxiteles. The Heracles of Lysippos, the embodiment of strength developed beyond human possibility, appeared colossal, whether the absolute dimensions were really great--like the statue from Tarention which represented him resting upon a basket after the labor of cleansing the Augean stables--or whether in miniature, suitable for a table ornament--like the celebrated Epitrapezios, showing the hero as a drinker. Copies, in part, still remain of the Labors of Heracles, executed in twelve groups for Alyzia, in Acarnania. They show the same type that is reproduced in the affected, overstrained statue of the later Athenian artist Glycon--the so-called Farnese Hercules in Naples. (_Fig._ 231.)

Besides these prominent groups by Lysippos, evidences of his creative energy, the figures of the deities appear to have been few in number. That examples from the circle of young and beautiful divinities, which formed the principal field for the art of Praxiteles, should be almost entirely wanting, was to be expected, he who had perfected the type of Heracles naturally preferring a powerful figure. Four statues of Zeus are mentioned. Though the colossal size of these seems to have been a prominent feature--the Zeus of Tarention measuring eighteen metres in height--still they should not be considered as executed after a conventional pattern, and consequently offering nothing worthy of remark. In view of all that is known of Lysippos, it seems not improbable that the Zeus of Otricoli (_Fig._ 232), formerly referred to the Pheidian type, may be more nearly related to its modification by Lysippos. The Helios upon the quadriga in Rhodes, besides its human beauty, may possibly have been of great importance in type and conception; but this is not assured by the fact that Nero prized it highly, and ordered it to be gilded. If it be added that Lysippos worked more industriously and rapidly than any other known sculptor--provided the account be true that the number of his productions amounted to fifteen hundred--it cannot be supposed that the time required for new conception and careful execution would be given to them all.

The school of Lysippos was not wanting in names of renown. His most gifted son, Euthycrates, appears to have equalled his father in groups of portrait statues, like the Gathering of Riders and a Hunt of Alexander in Thespia; while another son, Boidas, awakens our interest from the circumstance that the celebrated Praying Boy, in the museum at Berlin, may possibly be referred to him. Chares of Lindos produced the greatest known work of Greek sculpture in regard to size--namely, the colossal statue of the sun at Rhodes, over thirty metres high. Pliny describes it as already fallen and in ruins, therefore his words give us no information as to the conception and style; and the current account of its having stood so high above the entrance to the harbor that vessels sailed between the legs is a fabulous reminiscence of the figure projected at Mount Athos by Deinocrates. Among the scholars of Lysippos, Eutychides seems to have been the most independent; the goddess Anticheia, a copy of which is in the Vatican, was distinguished by excellence in the motive, ease of position, and effective drapery; but, in its genre-like treatment, it excluded all thought of religious art, to which a certain strictness and dignity should pertain. This goddess was seated with dignity, like a city itself, while another personification--the river-god--appeared “more flowing than water.” This marked significance in both cannot be ascribed to a happy chance, but must be regarded as evidence of that highly developed characterization by which the great Sikyonian master endeavored to conceive the whole being and to embody it in his portraits and representative figures. Among the nameless works from the school of Lysippos, creations are to be found of the highest merit. The originator of the Barberini Faun, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, whoever he may have been, should be ranked among the greatest masters of all times.

With Lysippos the development of art in its principal directions was terminated. As Overbeck says, “the summit lies behind us; we descend, and our way downwards may still lead through charming landscapes; but the pure, clear ether soon ceases to surround us, and, before the far-reaching glance, rises from the mist of centuries the flat and endless desert, in the sands of which the stream of Grecian art is quenched.” Alexander himself was the patron of the last of the seven great masters of sculpture; with him ended the fresh directness of Hellenic creations, as well as the greatness of Greece itself. He and his successors built temples afterwards to be furnished, as before, with statues of the deities and outwardly ornamented with sculptures; but they took their models from those earlier works which, elevated to a typical and canonical importance, were not to be surpassed, and employed themselves simply in reproducing. They followed more willingly the easy path open to them because, in the Alexandrian period, scepticism, empty formalism, and chilling indifference had already laid the ravaging axe to the Hellenic religion. With the spread of Hellenic power into the heart of Asia, its art, like its polity, lost its individuality, becoming _expansive_ instead of _intense_, in decorative subjection to the requirements of elegance and use. Losing its former independent nobility, sculpture soon fell from the height which it had occupied for a century and a half. Athens, Sikyon, and Argos, hitherto central points of development, where art had brought forth its richest fruits as a model for the entire Hellenic world, now became provincial cities of the Macedonian kingdom, and lost their glory--some for a long period, and others forever. Following the example of Lysippos, artists preferred wandering from court to court of Alexander’s successors; and in Alexandria, Antioch, Seleucia, in Nicomedia, Pergamon, Ambrakia, mostly new and elegant cities of royal residence, occupation could not have been wanting, though the quantity of work may have tended to hasten the decline. How extensive and extravagant were the artistic requirements of the Diadochi, how excessive the incense of flattery offered them, is shown in the description of the luxurious works of the Ptolemies and of the Seleucidæ, and by the three hundred statues erected to Demetrius Phalereus in Athens alone. These last may have been somewhat better than the representation of the winds upon the clepsydra and vane of Andronicos Kyrrhestios (_Figs._ 233 and 234), but even they must be classed as mere artisan-work. Much was done in portrait-statuary after the time of Alexander, who turned art in this direction; and the successive dynasties also encouraged it, as may easily be imagined. This is evident from the statues still preserved, from the Ptolemaic cameos, and especially the coins of the Diadochi. The heads of these kings have never been equalled, for fine and lifelike characterization and modelling, in all the portrait coins and medallions which have been struck down to the present time. (_Fig._ 235.)

Though a great deal was produced in the period of the Diadochi, and, in the line of portraiture, much that was good, still there must have been truth in the saying of Pliny that “after the 121st Olympiad (290 B.C.) art ceased, and revived again only in the 156th (150 B.C.).” It ceased, namely, in so far as it was made subservient to courts and decoration; but upon the soil of Greece itself, and among the people, it grew, and strove after higher aims. The production continued, but its artisan-like elaboration did not make good the lost artistic originality. Men of vigorous talent followed in the paths of Praxiteles and Lysippos, producing works which are the ornaments of our antique collections; but the character of reproductions, clinging to their creations, robs them of the name of artist in the full sense of the word. The scanty notices of Pliny are, in general, correct; but he omits to mention some exceptions which represent a further development of sculpture, not quite unimportant, though questionable in principle.

Philip V. of Macedon. 220 to 178.

Perseus of Macedon. 178 to 168.

Fig. 235.--Coins of the Diadochi.]

In two places, at the royal court of Pergamon and in the republic of Rhodes, productive art rose again to a certain independence and originality. Pliny himself, in another place, says that “several artists illustrated the battles of Attalos and Eumenes against the Gauls; namely, Isigonos, Phycomachos, Stratonicos, and Antigonos.” The great victory over these barbarians was fought in 229 B.C. by Attalos, with which Eumenes, by a misunderstanding easily to be explained, appears to have been connected. Attalos erected in his capital a grand monument to his victory, and, not contenting himself with this, consecrated another upon the Acropolis at Athens, perhaps in part a copy of that in Pergamon. Remnants of both monuments still exist which give a comparatively good knowledge of the artistic peculiarities of this school. The investigations upon this site, now approaching completion, have unearthed hundreds of fragments in high-relief, part of a gigantomachia originally forming the decoration of an altar. The altar was surrounded by Ionic colonnades, the high stereobate of which was ornamented with sculptures in high-relief, the whole being elevated upon a gigantic terrace, 38 m. long, and 34 m. broad. The frieze, representing the gigantomachia, stands midway between the works of Lysippos and the Laocoon, and forms the most extensive and important monument of sculpture remaining from the time of the Diadochi; it is in many respects a parallel to that of the Mausoleum of Halicarnassos which represents the decorative work of the school of Scopas and Praxiteles. These works have now found their way to Berlin, but a critical account of them will be possible only when they shall have been made generally accessible by an official publication. The statue of the so-called Dying Gladiator of the Capitol belonged to the group in Pergamon already known (_Fig._ 236); as did the two figures in the Villa Ludovisi, representing a Gaul who, to escape the shame of slavery, has stabbed his wife, who sinks beside him, and is about to thrust the sword into his own neck. In the so-called Dying Gladiator, the rough hair growing low upon the neck, the strongly marked indentation between the brow and the projecting Northern nose, the beard shorn to the upper lip, the heavy cheek-bones, the fleshy and somewhat clumsily formed body, the hard and calloused skin upon the hands and feet, the twisted neckband, and the curved battle-horn have long since shown the meaning of this statue. In the group in the Ludovisi Villa, the same marble, a like and peculiar treatment of the forms, with the same type of head, leave no doubt that this also belonged to a large group representing a victory over the Gauls. From its style, it cannot be considered as a Roman monument, particularly as some notices of the Athenian Votive Offering of Attalos clearly identify it.

The most striking novelty in these monuments, and also in the school of art at Pergamon, is the characteristic following-out of ethnographical differences. Previously, when artists would distinguish barbarians, they were content to make the nationality clear by costume and accessories; but this could not suffice for Lysippos, who had carried individual characterization to such a height in his portrait-statues, and who probably, in his group of the battle upon the Granicos, illustrated the peculiarities of the Persian race. In groups of portrait-statues it was necessary to treat the action with absolute truthfulness, thus leading the way to historic art. This is perfected in the monument in question, the ideal battle scene being based upon real details; it was not merely a strife among men, but Greeks and Celts stood opposed, each nation with its marked features and peculiarities, the barbarians distinguished not outwardly alone, but by their natural wildness.

This is evident from a number of figures of the Athenian votive offering of Attalos, still preserved; our knowledge of their connection with the Dying Gladiator and the school of Pergamon is due to Brunn. According to Pausanias, this votive offering consisted of figures half the size of life, in four groups, showing the gigantomachia, the combat of the Amazons, the battle of Marathon, and the victory of Attalos. Figures exist from them all; from the first, a giant, dead and outstretched, is in the museum at Naples, as also one of the second, a fallen Amazon; from the third, a dead body clad in breeches, and two nude Persians kneeling, are in Naples, the Vatican, and in the possession of Signor Castellani. From the fourth, a kneeling figure, at Paris, and one kneeling and one falling backward, at Venice, are unmistakable Gauls; while a sitting figure, wounded, also at Venice, and a youthful one, dead, at Naples, are probably also of that race. Judging from these remains, the composition must have included numerous figures, as the five existing Gauls--perhaps also several more--bespeak a corresponding number at Pergamon, and forty is the lowest that can be reckoned for the whole. Their position was probably upon the steps of the monument, which possibly bore the statue of the founder. It must have stood near the wall of the Acropolis, since it has been said that a figure from the gigantomachia was thrown by a storm into the theatre which stood at the foot of this fortress. That only the conquered are found among the pieces preserved seems to be an evidence that these remnants are from the original rather than from any copy, because, aside from the improbability that so extensive a work would have been copied in later times, the effect of the storm suggests the thought that the erect statues of the victors would have been less likely to last through so many centuries than the lying and cowering figures, not so easily injured on account of their closer connection with the base. Notwithstanding their relation in style to the Capitoline statue and to the group in the Ludovisi Villa, these are distinctly inferior and harder. Brunn is probably right in his supposition that they are the work of scholars, and a contemporaneous reproduction from the studio of that master, who himself executed the monument at Pergamon, the figures of which ranked in merit with the Dying Gladiator. Many deficiencies may be accounted for by its reduction to half life-size; its repetition at this scale, for the Athenian votive offering, appearing to have satisfied the king.

The work most nearly related to this, also in marble, and perfectly similar in conception, is a figure of the Marsyas group, the celebrated Knife-sharpener in the Uffizi at Florence. This is also a representative of barbarism, probably a Scythian, the others having been Gauls; but, artistically, this makes no difference. No originals remain of the other figures in the group, of which the barbarian, cowering upon the ground and sharpening the knife for the flaying of Marsyas, probably formed no very important part. Another aim, the careful anatomical treatment of the body, is ostentatiously displayed in the copies of this work now in Berlin and Florence. The group suggests another locality, and forms a connecting medium between those two most important centres of art in that period, Pergamon and Rhodes.

Among the few republics of the time, the island of Rhodes was able to rival the brilliant courts of kings, in regard to artistic treasures, by its wealth of commerce and its political neutrality--the latter being rendered possible, as nowhere else, by its situation and importance. That the influence of Lysippos prevailed there is clear from the fact that, after this master had sent thither his Phoibos upon the quadriga, the Rhodian Chares went to learn of him, and afterwards executed for his native city the above-mentioned colossus. This was followed in the same place by a hundred other colossal figures, which were probably related, in point of style, to the works of Lysippos. The statement of Pliny that each, singly, would have sufficed to make the place of its exposition famous is hardly intelligible. Numerous names of artists, mostly of Rhodes, found partly in inscriptions upon the bases, and partly mentioned by Pliny, might here be mentioned.

The multiplied productions of colossal works, however, would not suffice to give a very favorable idea of the state of art in Rhodes, were it not for the preservation of two examples, prominent among many, which were famous even in antiquity. These were the group of the Laocoon, in the Vatican, and the so-called Farnese Bull, in Naples. The first (_Fig._ 237), which Pliny, with extravagant praise, calls the work of three Rhodians, Agesandros, Athanodoros, and Polydoros, was found in 1506--not in one piece, as he describes it, but in six--among the ruins of the house of Titus, in whose palace Pliny says it was placed. It represents the priest Laocoon, who sinned at the altar through love, and whom Apollo chastised by means of two serpents. This expiation became tragic, from its having taken place at the moment when Laocoon had resolved to save his native city, Troy; and also from the suffering of the children, innocent, though born in sin. The serpents have encircled the three figures; the youngest is falling from the deadly sting; the father, sinking upon the altar after a desperate defence, is no longer able to protect himself; while the elder son, not yet threatened with instant death, but hopelessly entangled in the coils of the serpent, turns upon his father a look of despairing horror.

This grand work, though from Pliny down to later times esteemed beyond its real merit, still makes evident to us peculiarities in the art of Rhodes which, in many respects, render it of independent value. We find in it a choice of subject new in sculpture, the technical and artistic difficulties of which appear almost insurmountable, so that it could only be treated by ability well trained and long experienced. It gave opportunity to surpass all existing productions in its display of artistic technical superiority. When the body of the Laocoon is compared with the type of Heracles, it cannot be doubted that the canon of Lysippos was followed; but the forms, which with him were developed from the living model, in this, as in the Marsyas of Pergamon, are taken from anatomical studies, and are wanting in fulness of life: the overdetailed muscles are too studied, distinct, and separated; they are marble, and not flesh. The composition would, in real life, be impracticable; the action is visibly so ordered that it never could be possible, and is throughout developed with an aim towards the greatest effect. But this effect is by no means merely formal, limited to the restless and disquieting play of the lines of the limbs and trunks, and of the coils of the serpents. It is in the highest degree pathetic. Thus this element of the school of Praxiteles existed in this work, both the leading characteristics of that master being here displayed with an excessive ostentation. The pathos confronts us too exclusively, not modified by any ethic principle. The work does not, therefore, have the tragic power which lies in the descriptions of Sophocles, because, in the group, only the effect is to be seen; we have no hint as to the cause. The pathetic blends far more with the pathological event than with the ethical. The mastery of rendering, the composition, the effect--everything is wonderful; but it all lies in the realm of display: our admiration is given to the artist rather than to the work. It cannot be denied that this effective treatment was the dominant feature in the art of Rhodes; but it set technical mastery in the foreground, to the neglect of absolute and intrinsic merit.

This applies equally to the second great work, the so-called Farnese Bull (_Fig._ 238), the creation of two artists from Tralles, Apollonios and Tauriscos, who may have worked in Rhodes, as, according to Pliny, the group was to be seen there before it was brought to Rome under Augustus. This large group was found in the Baths of Caracalla soon after the discovery of the Laocoon, and was transported to Naples, where it now stands in the Museo Nazionale. The scene is probably taken from the _Antiope_, a tragedy of Euripides, and an understanding of the story is necessary to its comprehension. Antiope was the daughter of King Nycteus of Thebes; he being angry with her because of the love of Zeus, and incredulous as to the cause of her pregnancy, she fled to Mount Kithairon, where she bore the twins Zethos and Amphion. Having given these to the care of a shepherd, she was received by King Epopeus of Sikyon; but Lycos, the brother and successor of Nycteus, carried on the hateful persecution, even to the extent of making war against her protector. Sikyon was destroyed, and Antiope returned as a slave to Thebes, where the ill-treatment of Dirke, wife of Lycos, obliged her to fly once more to the mountains. There, at a festival of Bacchus, she was found again by her persecutor, and, for her flight, was given the terrible punishment of being dragged to death by a bull. Zethos and Amphion were ready to execute the command when a recognition took place, and a just vengeance brought the fate intended for Antiope upon the head of Dirke. This moment forms the imposing scene of the group. The raging bull is only with difficulty held by the avenging sons; Dirke, a most beautiful woman, praying in vain for grace, clasps the knee of one while the other is ready to throw around her the noose by which she is to be dragged over the rough ground of Kithairon. The passion of the avenging sons, and the fear of Dirke, make the work highly pathetic and impressive; but it is not so really tragic as the Laocoon, because the motive of the evidently brutal deed, though not entirely neglected, as in the former, is still not entirely comprehensible. Antiope, the heroine of the tragedy, is indeed present. But she is not brought into the action, and stands, in fact, behind the principal characters. She is therefore hardly more than a lay figure, expressing nothing. It might perhaps have been better to omit Antiope altogether, and to leave the action without any motive at all. The figure has, however, an interest of its own, being in an excellent state of preservation, while the others have suffered by restoration and by retouching. The composition, with its numerous figures, admirably executed, has a picturesque effect which is somewhat new in the history of Greek sculpture. This is enhanced by the accessories of the story, the rocky ground, and many local details symbolical of the occasion. Besides a fine large dog, really belonging to the group, there are a chaplet and a basket, a disproportionately small boy ornamented with a wreath, and, still more inferior in size, two lions seizing a bull and a horse. There are also two boars coming out from a grotto, a lioness, a stag, a hind, a ram, an eagle with a snake, and a falcon over a dead bird; even turtles, snakes, and snails are represented. The mastery over the technical and artistic difficulties in this work is scarcely less admirable than in the Laocoon, and it gives the same impression of a successful piece of bravura, astonishing and quite fascinating for its novelty, boldness, and versatile power. The age, indeed, satiated with the best products of various schools, demanded the stimulus of an excessive appeal to superficial sources of interest. The group of the Marsyas is attributed to artists of Pergamon, and the Wrestlers in the Uffizi at Florence (_Fig._ 239) may, with greater certainty, be ascribed to those of Rhodes.

Before we pass to the last active period of Hellenic art, one other work, preserved from this age, the Apollo Belvedere of the Vatican (_Fig._ 240), still claims our consideration. Though without the name of the artist, or of the place of its origin, and not, perhaps, to be classed directly with the greatest productions of Pergamon and Rhodes, it is yet not unworthy to rank by their side. It is, like the Laocoon, one of the best-known statues among the existing treasures of antiquity, and scarcely needs a minute description. The splendid triumphant head looking into the distance, the slender figure, as fine in modelling as it is noble, the pleasing grace of the light step, assure for it an admiration, the more universal as these beauties--the combined result of the schools of Lysippos and of Praxiteles--are just those which are the most generally recognized. It is not an original work, in the full sense of the word, but an early Roman copy from the bronze, and seems to bear a closer relation to it than does the lately discovered head which is now in the museum at Basle. This latter has lost the characteristic features of the bronze style, and from the greater freedom of its treatment may be called a _translation_ into marble, in distinction from the _copy_ in the Vatican. Another reproduction of this work recently made known by Stephani, a bronze statuette in the Strogonoff collection, at St. Petersburg, has given an additional explanation of the action in which the god was represented. In the marble the left hand was wanting, and in the restoration this was supplied with a bow; but in the Strogonoff Apollo remains are still to be seen of the ægis, held in the hand, with which the deity drove back the Greeks, as described by Homer, Il. xv. 306. If the far-shooter be thus changed into the ægis-bearer, the shaking of the ægis symbolizing the storm, a plain reference may be found to the original motive of the work. When the Gauls threatened Delphi in 279 B.C., the defence of the Greeks was effectively assisted by a terrible storm, which threw the barbarians into a fearful panic, and which was regarded by the Greeks as caused by the personal intervention of Apollo, Athene, and Artemis. This might well have had an effect upon art similar to that of the victory of Attalos over the Gauls in Asia Minor. The Ætolians, indeed, proposed to erect at Delphi a votive offering, with figures of field-officers and of the three gods, while a statue of Apollo was erected in Patrae from a similar reason. In view of this, Overbeck has ventured to combine the Apollo Belvedere, the Artemis of Versailles (_Fig._ 241), and the striding Athene of the Capitoline Museum into one group, to which ideal union the unsimilarity of the workmanship, and even of the scale of the three statues, is not so much opposed--since these are all copies that have come down to us from different times--as is the movement of the Apollo, the middle figure, towards the right. This difficulty might be met by changing the positions, so that Athene should stand at the right and Artemis at the left, whereby the action of the figures might be from, rather than towards, each other, Artemis being turned decidedly more towards the front. If, however, this work originated in consequence of the victory in 279 B.C., it shows that a generation before the time of Attalos, at least in Greece proper, although attention had already been devoted to momentary action, art nevertheless still stood upon an ideal height, and could still delineate gods worthy of admiration.

These artistic efforts do not, on the whole, refute the opinion of Pliny that art ceased from the 121st to the 156th Olympiad--that is, from 300 to 150 B.C. The chief localities of its activity, Pergamon and Rhodes, may be considered only as asylums found by the higher sculpture after it had lost all foothold in its native home. But when he says it took a new flight at the close of that period, we must acknowledge that the result was not of that kind which could charm us as it did the Roman narrator. As Brunn remarks, the date of Pliny agrees with that period when Hellenic art attained a decided mastery in Rome. Scarcely any evidences of the monumental art of Greece were to be recognized in Rome before the conquest of Syracuse in 212 B.C. After this time the Roman triumphs brought forth, one after another, an almost oppressive number of productions, so that the art of the Greek colonies, and of Greece itself, overflowed Rome in a broad stream. Not to mention the plundering of Capua, Tarention, and numerous Grecian cities in Lower Italy, we have an example in the triumphs of Quintius Flaminius, the conqueror of Kynoskephalæ, 197 B.C., when the transportation of the statues lasted an entire day. The booty taken from Western Greece by M. Fulvius Nobilior, in 189 B.C., also contained not less than five hundred and fifteen statues. These extensive plunderings were at least equalled by the triumphs of L. Cornelius Scipio, the victor over Antiochos; of Æmilius Paulus, conqueror of Perseus; of Metellus Macedonicus, and of the destroyer of Corinth, Mummius, who has become proverbial for his barbarous robberies. It was not strange that at last a living art followed the triumphal chariot of Roman victories. Metellus employed many Grecian artists in the erection and ornamentation of his new buildings in Rome.

The scene of artistic industry thus became changed, and Rome, a foreign city, became the central point--first of possession, and afterwards of artistic activity. It might therefore be questioned whether what follows were not better suited to the chapter upon Rome; but it must be considered that the Romans were, from our present point of view, only wealthy collectors and patrons of art, and that the artists employed were still Grecian, and of the Hellenic school. This was not altered by their working in Rome, or even by their learning from the numberless productions accumulated there.

Roman grandeur was long contented with artistic booty for the ornamenting of its forums, temples, and public buildings; the immense wealth of the empire and proconsulate giving opportunity for procuring celebrated works by force, by purchase, or as honorary gifts. This brought forth dilettanteism, which led to the study of art, and to a zeal for collecting which made every new acquisition an additional incentive to covetousness. Study choked that impulse which, in a degenerate way, had endeavored to outdo what had been done by masters of the best period, and, accounting their method to be exclusively good, turned art back by a sort of reaction upon those earlier paths. The passion for collecting was not limited to the works ready at hand, but would have restorations and imitations by contemporary artists, made in the spirit of the originals. It could not have been otherwise than that art, after having exhausted the originals, and attained its aims in all directions, should react upon itself; but doubtless the circumstances of Rome had an essential influence upon the manner in which this took place, and greatly furthered this renaissance--to use a somewhat unsuitable term which, in its restricted sense, has been adopted for the far more original awakening of art at the close of the Middle Ages.

In the desire to enliven the different phases of artistic development, it was natural not to return to first principles, but rather to take those creations which lay near at hand, and try to find in them the way to improvement. The period under consideration, up to the commencement of the empire, offers examples of every stage of development, the dates of which can only here and there be given; but it seems that the way for an Hellenic renaissance was, during this period, partially opened.

Agasias of Ephesos appears as successor to the master of the Laocoon and of the Farnese Bull. The celebrated Borghese Gladiator in the Louvre, which represents a warrior in fictitious battle with a horseman, may be referred to the school of Rhodes. (_Fig._ 242.) As the statue did not belong to a group, but was independent, we see in it nothing but a show figure, in which the artist only sought for a position where he might outdo all that had gone before, and give opportunity to parade his technical mastery and his anatomical knowledge. That the work should be placed in this time, and not in the best period of the Rhodian school, is plain from the later character of the writing in the artist’s inscription, from the inferior understanding of the mutual relations of the muscles, and particularly from the insignificance of the idea, and the entire lack of the pathetic, all which elements lent to the works of Rhodes an especial value.

As examples from Rhodes and Pergamon not only lay near at hand for the artists of Asia Minor, but were germane to their civilization, so the numerous Attic masters of this period looked to the time of perfection in Attica and Sikyon. The tenets of the school of Lysippos still held sway there, and what splendid fruit it bore, even at this time, notwithstanding the retrogression from its earlier overvalued merit, is shown by the much admired torso, now in the Vatican Belvedere, by Apollonios, son of Nestor of Athens. (_Fig._ 243.) This must certainly have been a sitting Heracles, a motive repeatedly treated by Lysippos, though no restoration of it has yet been decidedly successful. The most probable is the latest by Petersen, which represents him as playing the kithara. The somewhat later statue by Glycon of Athens, the Heracles, who stands leaning upon his club (_Fig._ 231), though approaching somewhat in conception to a work of Lysippos, is far inferior. With this may be mentioned a still poorer repetition, the Heracles of the Pitti Palace in Florence, through a false inscription ascribed to Lysippos.

Besides Apollonios, who was distinguished also by his youthful satyr and an Apollo, which are too little known for a more minute description, the school of Scopas and Praxiteles was followed by the son of Apollodoros of Athens, Cleomenes, the sculptor of the Venus de’ Medici. When compared with the divine figure of the Venus of Melos, though pleasing, it appears degenerate. The godlike beauty which we impute to the Cnidian Aphrodite, and find in the Venus of Melos, is lost by the continual emphasis of sensuous effects, notwithstanding all the mastery and delicate feeling for beauty. With the exception of the Braschi Venus at Munich and the Venus of the Capitol, which are more nearly related to that of Cnidos, nearly all the nude figures of Venus in the various museums belong to the same circle and stage of development, even when they betray later work. The masters by no means appear to have been mere copyists; but the works of Praxiteles were altered, to suit the taste of the times, by artists in whom individuality was not quite extinct.

The school of Pheidias, with its high ideal, of which the age in question had little understanding, could never have become popular in the same degree. Rome possessed but few works of this master which could have served as examples, and those not the most important. Still, reminiscences of the best Attic style were not wanting, especially in those figures of the gods the type of which had been established by Pheidias, as in the statues of Zeus and Athene. The chryselephantine Zeus, by Polycles and Dionysios, in Metellus’s Temple of Jupiter, as also the Capitoline of the same material by Apollonios, may justly be referred to the Olympian original; the former at least with the more certainty, when it is considered that the sons of Polycles--Timocles and Timarchides--copied the sculptures upon a shield of the Parthenos for an Athene, designed for Elateia in Phokis. It is possible--and this may, perhaps, be still further established by Brunn, who has pointed out this connection--that the Pallas in the Villa Ludovisi, by Antiochos of Athens, which has been estimated below its worth, may be a reproduction of the Parthenos, modified and perhaps formed from memory. The treatment of the garments, and the whole position of this otherwise ill-executed figure, remind us of the chryselephantine works, and possess something of the dignity and nobility of the better period.

At a time when Cicero could say that in his opinion “the works of Polycleitos were perfectly beautiful” the master from Argos must have come into fashion. The artistic representative of this stage of appreciative development was Pasiteles, who worked in the time of Pompey, and whose important school has left traces of this influence in examples that have been preserved. The pathetic tendency was not entirely to be avoided, and, though not so evident in the academic male figure of the Villa Albani, which bears the name of Stephanos, the scholar of Pasiteles, is yet undeniable in the groups of Orestes and Electra in Naples, and of Orestes and Pylades in the Louvre. This trait is still more marked in a work of Menelaos, the scholar of Stephanos, the beautiful and celebrated group in the Villa Ludovisi (_Fig._ 244), designated by Winckelmann and Welcker as Electra and Orestes; by Jahn, as Merope and Cresphontes; by Kekulé, as Deianeira and Hyllos; and by Schulze and Burckhardt, as Penelope and Telemachos. Though the artist has here made concessions to more recent influences, they did not give the work an eclectic character, as asserted by Kekulé, but rather displayed a somewhat archaistic conception, and the short proportions of Polycleitos, long since abandoned for the canon of Lysippos. On the other hand, the remark of Kekulé appears just, that the characters do not seem conceived and modelled after nature, but rather as seen through the medium of the tragedy of Euripides.

When the reproductions had run through the entire circle of styles from the best period of art, the archaic was at last brought forward. It is known that Augustus ornamented his buildings, particularly the gable of the Palatine Temple of Apollo, with sculptures of the masters from Chios, Boupalos and Athenis, and that he also carried away from Tegea the Athene of the old Attic Endoios. Archaic art, always possessing a charm for devotional images which was doubled in a time of such satiety, came thus into fashion. A large number of archaistic works appeared, imitated after the antique, as has already been mentioned. They not seldom betray the influence of single figures from larger compositions in relief, as in the instance of the Amphora of the Athenian Sosibios in the Louvre.

The more or less free reproductiveness of this period, which we have to thank for a large proportion of the contents of our museums, naturally came to a conclusion in that unbridled mixture of style which combined in the same relief not only the various aims of different schools, but their well-known motives, as is the case with the relief of the Salpion upon the font of Gaeta. There was very little originality, and that was limited to genre, particularly to the idyllic, as in the play of Cupids, the best of which might be referred to old models. It is not known whether this was the case with the lioness of Arkesilaos, in the possession of Varro, which, according to Pliny’s description, bound by Cupids, was drinking from a horn, with mittens upon the paws to render them harmless. Models for this may be sought in the paintings of Alexandria. It is certain that the centaurs, bound and worried by Cupids, the best examples of which are preserved in the Louvre, the Vatican, the Doria Palace, and the Capitoline Museum, with that of Aristeas and Papias from Aphrodisias, are imitations of bronze originals. (_Fig._ 245.)

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Hellenic architecture and sculpture, from their unsurpassed perfection, require a more comprehensive treatment than that accorded to those arts in any other ancient nation. This is especially the case with sculpture, because, in Greece, the demands of its nature were more completely fulfilled by the Greeks than has ever happened, at any time, with any other people; while Grecian architecture, notwithstanding its wonderful monumental perfection, did not deal with all the possibilities of the art. Both, however, demand our attention in a greater degree than does Hellenic painting. Architecture has left great masses of ruins, and sculpture numerous collections of antique treasures; but of Grecian painting there are no remains; its history is accordingly a history rather of artists than of art. If this necessitates for painting a more limited treatment, we must not therefore conclude that its development was, in reality, inferior to that of its sister arts, since, in fact, it fully equalled that of architecture and sculpture. This has often been unjustly doubted, but it would be fully evident were nothing more known than the almost measureless fame of the first masters.

The course of development of Grecian painting is by no means so obvious as that of sculpture: we have no sure date of its beginning, but it is at least equally remote. Conze shows painting to have been even the most primitive, it having existed among the aborigines in the decoration of pottery and terra-cotta. The notes of Pliny upon the matter (xxxv. 15) appear to be hardly more than a supplementary reconstruction of a conjectured state of development, garnished vaguely with the names of ancient artists. The first stages, the employment of a simple tone in the filling of outline figures with a color of brick-dust, called monochromatic painting, had long since been mastered by the neighboring peoples--the Mesopotamians, Phœnicians, and Egyptians, who were acquainted also with the use of bright colors. This work must early have been known to the Greeks through imported articles--Homer mentioning vessels and fabrics--even though they could not apply it to the productions of their own land. Monochromatic painting upon pottery, familiar to the primitive Ionians, seems to have originated upon the Syro-Phœnician coasts. A faint reminiscence of the ancient, widely extended employment of color may be found in Pliny, who designates an Egyptian, bearing the Greek name of Philocles, as the discoverer of linear painting. Works of this kind, however, were purely decorative, like the older Greek vase-paintings (_Figs._ 187 and 191), and of great similarity; it seems unnecessary to offer conjectures as to the source whence this impulse came. Of still less significance are the names of artists which have been fabulously attached to the various inventions, such as Cleanthes, Aridikes, and Ecphantos, of Corinth; Telephanes and Craton, of Sikyon; and Saurias, of Samos. Unless, from the fact that several are mentioned as dwelling in Corinth and Sikyon, it may be concluded that decorative painting probably flourished in those cities before the sixtieth Olympiad (530 B.C.). What Pliny says of Eumaros of Athens does not justify the supposition of any considerable progress, although, in figures, he distinguished between male and female, expressed in some slight degree age and characteristic peculiarities, and, at least, made an end to that crudeness which found satisfaction in writing names over forms otherwise precisely alike. Greater progress was made by his successor, Kimon of Cleonæ--500 to 480 B.C.--who improved the former sack-like garments (_Fig._ 191) by folds, and gave a more detailed drawing to the nude, placing the eye in a profile head also in profile, instead of making it look towards the front, as in the figure mentioned above. With him began truthfulness to nature, and correctness of drawing, at a time when sculpture in Ægina, Athens, Sikyon, and Argos was preparing for that highest perfection attained afterwards by Pheidias.

After the Persian war, through two generations, the progress of painting was proportionate to its former backwardness, until it attained a height little short of that reached by sculpture. The first master worthy of mention--and likewise one of the greatest artists we know--demands particular attention, from having been the founder of painting as an art. Polygnotos of Thasos (475 to 455 B.C.), the son of Aglaophon, who also is mentioned as a painter, executed the greater number of his works in Athens, where he was much respected by Kimon. Of the pictures in the Stoa Poikile, painted under his direction, at least the Conquest of Troy, and the Council of Princes sitting in judgment upon the sacrilege committed by Ajax against Cassandra, were by his hand. The Battle of the Amazons was by Micon, the Battle of Marathon by Panainos and Micon; the fourth, perhaps the latest, was the Battle between the Athenians and Lacedæmonians near Oinoe: the artist is not known. Polygnotos worked, together with Micon, upon other Athenian frescos, scenes from the lives of heroes in the Temple of Theseus. In the Temple of the Dioscuri he painted the Rape of the Daughters of Leukippos, next to which was the Return of the Argonauts, by Micon. In the Pinacotheca of the Propylæa was a series of representations, among which Brunn has recognized as companion pieces Diomedes Robbing Philoctetes of his Bow, and Odysseus Seizing the Palladion; the Murder of Ægisthos by Orestes, and the Sacrifice of Polyxena; Odysseus Appearing before Nausicaa and her Companions, and Achilles among the Daughters of Lycomedes. Of the other works by this master may be mentioned those at Thespeia and Plataia; that in the Temple of Athene at the latter place represented Odysseus attacking the suitors. The best of all the creations of Polygnotos, the paintings in the Lesche of the Cnidians at Delphi, illustrating the conquest of Ilion and the nether world, are so minutely described by Pausanias (x. 25-31) that they furnish the most important material for an understanding of his art.

We should hardly be able justly to estimate this master were it not for the descriptions of Pausanias; for the other classic authors, with some exceptions in Aristotle, deal only with secondary matters. In regard to his coloring, Cicero, in his “Four Colors,” says nothing, speaking only of his drawing, while Quintilian merely wonders how, in his time, there could still be admirers of such primitive painting. It was merely a coloring without light and shade, a simple treatment by local tones of surfaces within outlines. That these tones were not unbroken, as upon the Nile and Tigris, but finely graded and everywhere characteristic, we learn from the special mention of the doves, of the shaded coloring of the fish in the Acheron, of the blackish-blue color of the corpse-devouring Eurynomos, and of the gray of the shipwrecked Ajax. The red cheeks of Cassandra, admired by Lucian, give evidence of several colors within the same outline. But though Cicero praises the drawing, the little which is intelligible in Pliny’s account of the master tends the other way. Still, it must be acknowledged that more is implied by the motive of the Olympian Jupiter, by the encomium upon Cassandra’s eyebrows by Lucian, and by the exaggerated expression of an epigram--“in the lids of Polyxena lay the whole Trojan war”--than the petty peculiarities with which Pliny invests the painter would lead us to expect. Ælian praises the strict carefulness and fineness of the outline drawing, the expression, and the garments. But the most remarkable testimony concerning this master is that of Aristotle, who describes his figures as surpassing nature; while artists like Dionysios contented themselves with equalling it, and others, like Pauson, were content to remain below it. Elsewhere he calls him the painter of _ethics_--that is, of character--in a grand style which the works of Zeuxis failed to attain. Combining this judgment with that of Ælian, who ascribes grandeur to Polygnotos, we may conclude that this artist drew in a broad and ideal style. That to this were united an epic clearness and liveliness of treatment, not only in the single figures and groups, but in the entire composition, is fully evident from the description which Pausanias gives of the paintings in the Lesche. In short, correctness, richness, and grandeur of composition must be accounted the chief merits of Polygnotos--merits to which none of his successors attained, though they may have far surpassed him in execution, as painters in a more restricted sense. Less painter than artist, he pursued, in his wall decorations, a thoroughly monumental direction, which after his time, through change of aim, was neglected.

The most celebrated companions of Polygnotos, but, as Ælian remarks, not equalling him in greatness, were Micon of Athens, whose name has already been mentioned, and Panainos, a cousin of Pheidias, who, besides the battle of Marathon in the Poikile, executed the paintings upon the throne of the Pheidian Zeus in Olympia. Dionysios of Colophon and Pauson have already been spoken of. The first seems to have carried out the strict carefulness of his model, Polygnotos, to a degree which was naturally unfavorable alike to grace and to greatness of style. Pauson, though accounted an artist by Aristotle, may be compared to Buffalmacco, scorned and derided, among the companions of Giotto; not fitted for productions of a grand style, he did not attempt them, and his nude paintings, without ethical significance, were harmful to young observers.