Religion and Art in Ancient Greece

by Ernest Arthur Gardner

CHAPTER VI

INDIVIDUALISM

The great religious ideals of the fifth century were, as we have seen, closely bound up with the subordination of the individual to the State; and their expression in sculpture was also due in almost every case to the employment of the artist by the community. In the fourth century, on the other hand, we find on every side a stronger assertion of individuality. It was a commonplace among Attic orators in the fourth century to contrast the private luxury and ostentation of their own day with the simplicity of life among the great men of the earlier age, whose houses could not be distinguished from those of the common people, though their public buildings and the temples they raised to the gods were of unparalleled splendour. In religion, and above all in religious art, we find something of the same tendency. There are few if any records of the dedication during the fourth century of those great statues of the chief gods which were looked back to by all subsequent generations as the embodiment of a national ideal. But there were, perhaps, more statues of the gods made in the fourth century which were the objects not merely of artistic admiration, but of intense and sometimes morbid personal devotion. The mere list of the gods preferred for representation is an indication in itself; while in the fifth century, Zeus and Athena and Hera, the great gods of the State or of the Hellenic race, are the subjects of the most famous statues, in the fourth century it is rather Aphrodite and Dionysus and Asclepius, those whose gifts contribute to individual happiness or enjoyment, that offer most scope to the powers of the artist.

And the sculptors themselves, in the fourth century, show more individuality of style. In the latter part of the fifth century the genius of Phidias had so dominated religious art that the works of his successors, men like Alcamenes and Agoracritus, could hardly be distinguished from his. But the great sculptors of the fourth century, Scopas and Praxiteles and Lysippus, not to mention others of less note, devoted themselves not so much to the expression through perfect physical form of great religious ideals, but to a realisation of the character and, so to speak, the personality of the gods whom they portrayed. And they did this by the same means by which they expressed in their art the characters and passions of heroes or of men, thereby removing the gods from the sphere of passionless benignity and power which is assigned to them by the art of the fifth century. Such a treatment evidently gave more scope for variety in the styles of the sculptors; and although we can sometimes trace the influence of one upon another, yet each clearly shows his own characteristics. We are expressly told of Praxiteles that he showed the most admirable skill in infusing into his marble works the passions and emotions of the soul; and the extant remains of the statues made by Scopas and Lysippus show that they also, each in his own way, attained the same results.

If the sculpture of the fifth century was ethical, expressing noble ideals of character whether in gods or men, that of the fourth century may be called psychological. It is not content with character; it expresses also mood and even passion, and thereby gives more prominence to individuality. At first sight it is not easy to realise how this change came to affect the representations of the gods. The gods of Homer are, indeed, full of individual character; but we have seen how in the fifth century, though the greatest sculptors declared it was the gods of Homer that they represented, these representations were idealised and raised above those human touches in which the individuality is most conspicuous. There was, in the Homeric hymns and in the lyric poets, a delight in details of incident and in personal peculiarities and even in romantic tales about the gods; and in the fourth century, when the high idealisation of the preceding age is no longer so strong in its influence, we find a similar tendency in art as well. While the great statues of the gods in the fifth century are almost all represented as either enthroned or standing, not employed in any particular action or function, the most characteristic examples of the statues of gods made in the fourth century have almost all some definite motive. We may take as an example what was perhaps the most famous statue of antiquity, the Aphrodite by Praxiteles at Cnidus. The goddess is represented as nude; and it is often said that goddesses would not have been so represented in the fifth century. It is true that full drapery seems more consistent with the dignified and august figures of Phidian art. But if the religious type had required that Phidias should make a nude goddess, we may be sure he would have made her naked and unashamed, with no more self-consciousness than a nude Apollo; above all, he would not have thought it necessary to provide a motive for her nudity. With Praxiteles it is otherwise. He represents the goddess as preparing for the bath, and just letting her last garment slip from her hand on to a vase that stands beside her; and, in addition to this provision of a motive—an excuse, one might almost say—for representing her without her clothes, he hints, from the instinctive gesture of her other hand which she holds before her body, at a half-conscious shrinking from exposure, a feeling of modesty which, however suitable to a woman, is by no means consistent with a high ideal of the goddess. The face and figure are of extraordinary physical beauty of type, of a breadth and nobility which contrast with the smaller, prettier, and less dignified forms of later art; the gesture, too, has not the conscious coquetry which we see in such a work as the Venus de' Medici. But, on the other hand, we must recognise that the statue represents the goddess under a human rather than a divine aspect, that even her mood and feeling of timidity are portrayed in a manner which, however charming in itself, is totally inconsistent with her worship as a great goddess. We are not surprised to hear that this statue inspired a personal passion; she is the goddess of love, and is represented as not beyond the reach of human attraction; but she is brought down to the level of mortals, rather than capable of raising mortals to a higher sphere by her contemplation. It is the same, though perhaps to a less degree, with other statues of the gods made in the fourth century. The motives with which the later Greeks went to visit the great statues of the Phidian age were, as we have seen, to a great extent religious, and their contemplation was regarded to some extent as a service; here we have "idolatry" in its highest form. But those who went to see the Aphrodite of Cnidus went chiefly to enjoy the beauty of the statue; and although this may be the best thing from the artistic point of view, it certainly has not the same religious import.

There is another element in the individuality of fourth-century statues which may appeal to modern artists, and which certainly did appeal—in an inverted manner—to early Christian writers of invectives against pagan idolatry. It was said that Phryne had posed as a model for the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles; and the character of the goddess was inferred from that of her votary. It is clear that a Greek artist could not have, in the case of a nude female statue, the same choice of types constantly present to his observation and his memory as he had in the case of male statues; and the individuality of the model, however beautiful, would thus tend to assert itself against the type. Thus personality and individual character, "the ultimate condition of beauty," to use Mr. Ruskin's words, in modern as in Tuscan art, comes much nearer to expression in the fourth century than in the fifth. But a study of such a statue as the Cnidian Aphrodite shows us nevertheless that in the beauty of the type and the avoidance of the accidental, the art of Praxiteles was as far removed from realism as it was from the vague generalisation of Græco-Roman and modern pseudo-classical art. It is full of life and individuality, but it is the individuality of a character realised within his mind by the artist, not merely copied from the human model he set before him.

Another method by which the motive becomes prominent in the art of the fourth century is to be seen in the interpretation of mythological conceptions. These are realised and embodied in statues; but the statues offer a new, sometimes, it seems, almost an accidental and trifling version of a solemn religious conception; it appears as if the artist were playing with a mythological subject. Thus in the statue made by Praxiteles of Apollo Sauroktonos, "the lizard-slayer," the god stands with an arrow in his hand, as if trying to catch with it a lizard who runs up a tree; it suggests a boyish game rather than the epithet of a god. Again, the worship of Artemis Brauronia at Athens was one of the oldest and most sacred cults in the city, and women at marriage and at other critical times of their life used to offer her their garments, thereby bringing themselves into close contact with the goddess and claiming her special protection, the garments being actually placed on the old image. If, as is probable, the Artemis of Gabii is a copy of the statue substituted by Praxiteles for this old image, we see there the goddess, as a graceful girlish figure, fastening a cloak upon her shoulder. This may be taken as symbolical of the earlier custom of placing the garments on the statue; but we have evidence that the worshippers were not content with such a symbolic contact, but had the actual garments placed on the new statue as they had been on the old. Here we have probably a case of unsuccessful substitution; the artistic representation did not suffice to replace the actual rite. But the representation itself is doubtless intended in a way which, however graceful, does not represent any deep religious feeling; one feels that the artist found the subject a convenient one as an artistic motive, rather than that he had any deep religious idea to express.

We must not, however, go too far in denying religious ideals to the fourth century altogether. Some of the gods, who came very near to the life of man, but who were nevertheless worshipped with a real belief in their power and benevolence, found at this time their fullest expression in art. An example may be seen in the Demeter of Cnidus, the mother sorrowing for her daughter, whose suffering brings her into close sympathy with human weakness, and whose mysteries, perhaps more than any other Hellenic service, brought men and women into personal communion with the gods. We may take as another instance the head of Asclepius from Melos in the British Museum. Here, as Brunn has pointed out in his admirable analysis of its forms, we may recognise not so much the god as the half-human, half-divine physician, a genial and friendly spirit who persuades rather than commands. The expression is not only intellectual, but has also an infinite gentleness, as of one not himself unacquainted with mortal pain and sorrow; and such a conception, as we know from Christian art, often appeals to those who find the majesty of Zeus too distant, the idea of his godhead too abstract. In such almost human ideals the individuality of the fourth century finds its full scope, as in other half-human creations of the artist's imagination. Apollo as the inspired musician or—if we accept the derivation of the Apollo Belvedere from a fourth-century original—as the disdainful archer, Hermes, the protector and playmate of his little brother Dionysus, and many other such representations of the gods in their personal moods and characteristic actions, seem in many ways less divine, less full of religious feeling than such an Asclepius; if the great gods are brought too near to human passions and weaknesses, they cannot but lose much of their divinity.

One might easily multiply examples of similar motives in the statues of the gods made in the fourth century; but we should find the same underlying principles in all cases. The gods are indeed more clearly realised as having personal character and individuality, and for this reason they may sometimes inspire keener personal feelings of worship or even of romantic devotion. But the older and higher conceptions of the gods, as an essential part of the State religion, and as embodying the ideals of the race or of the city, are no longer to be found, except in a somewhat lifeless continuance of the fifth-century tradition. The intensity of expression which we find in human heroes is, indeed, expressed also in such types as that of Apollo the musician or of Dionysus the god of inspired enthusiasm. But this tendency is not fully developed until a later age. The subtle distinctions of character between the different gods are, on the other hand, now most keenly observed and most skilfully rendered. But in spite of this, one does not feel that the artist has the same belief in the gods and in their power as we can see in the Phidian age. If his artistic attainment is possibly more skilful, the religious import of his work is certainly less.