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.
In recent years, however, the archæologists have sought to introduce a supplementary method whereby the authorship of well-known sculptures may be verified. The method depends upon the minute examination of pieces of sculpture and the tabulation of their technical peculiarities. The eye or the ear, the nostril or the chin of a statue, and especially of a Greek original, speaks volumes to the scientific critic. Aided by a collection of prints, he arranges sculptures from any of the European collections into classes. The hint of a date enables him provisionally to associate a class with a well-known craftsman, and the identification of the authorship of masterpieces begins.
Criticism of this kind looms largely in the literature of sculpture in these days. Even the amateur who is interested in art rather than archæology must, therefore, have a clear idea of the type of evidence leading to the ascription of well-known sculptures to particular artists. Almost any famous work would serve to illustrate this. Critical struggles, for instance, have waged around the “[Venus of Milo].” Is it a fourth-century work, or can it be roughly dated at 150 b.c.? We have also referred to the critical mystery surrounding the authorship of the “Niobides.”
We, however, choose for the purpose of illustrating our point, two famous works now in the Vatican—“[The Ares Ludovisi]” and the “[Meleager].” Both are generally acknowledged to be copies of fourth-century sculptures of the finest quality. Neither possesses the strongly marked characteristics of the style of Praxiteles; nor do they resemble the “[Apoxyomenus].” Are they then to be ascribed to Scopas? That is the critical problem.
The “[Ares]” depicts the war-god as a youth. This is a fourth-century variation from the robust, bearded, and fully armed type of an earlier period. Ares is pondering fresh feats of arms. Or may be, as the Roman copyist suggests by the introduction of the tiny Eros, he is solving some deep amatory problem set him by Aphrodite. At first sight the “[Ares]” seems to be by a sculptor who has imbibed some of the spirit of both Scopas and Praxiteles. The sentiment strikes us as Praxitelean, the expression rather suggests Scopas. Leubke, noting the length of the limbs, says that the “[Ares Ludovisi]” reminds him of the style of Lysippus. Dr. Waldstein, however, will have none of this. He insists upon the claims of Scopas. To Dr. Waldstein, the overhanging brow which gives the pensive expression to the “[Apoxyomenus]” is the characteristic of Lysippus. Its absence compels him to refer the “[Ares]” to Scopas. It all depends upon a wrinkle. Needless to say, we do not propose to decide where doctors disagree.
But the archæological method can be illustrated even more happily by the critical history of the Vatican “[Meleager].” The stripling stands with his dog, careless of any danger which the future may have in store. The artist would seem to represent a youthful huntsman impatient for his quarry, rather than the trusty hero who sailed with the Argonauts and freed the chace of Calydon from the devastating boar of Artemis. As is the case with most of the well-known Greek sculptures, no signature or inscription connects it with any particular artist. The exceptional evidence present in the case of the “[Hermes]” of Praxiteles is, as we shall see, also absent. The first clue comes from the pages of Pausanias, who names Scopas as the architect of the temple of Athena Alea at Tegea, and speaks of him as the sculptor of the pedimental groups. Pausanias goes on to describe the marbles, and gives a list of the figures in the eastern pediment whereon was figured, as he says, “The hunting of the Calydonian boar.” These facts, together with the emotional character of the “[Meleager],” justified the statue being associated with the sculptor of the Tegean group.
But the evidence did not end here. During recent excavations, two heads, which had evidently fallen from the eastern pediment, were discovered. (“Journal Hellenic Studies,” vol. xv.) They showed the passionate insistence upon vitality, particularly in the intensity of the gaze of the eyes, which we have already noted in the “[Mausoleum Charioteer],” and which certainly characterises the “[Meleager]” at Rome.
Here was fair material for a dogmatic superstructure of really imposing dimensions. The scientific critic had, of course, to seek for further instances of the sharply rounded eyeballs. He had to find other cases in which the intensity of expression was clearly due to the deep setting of the eyes. Upon the results of these researches he could assign a certain number of the sculptures to Scopas, and by a process of exhaustion many another fourth-century work to the numerous sculptors mentioned in Pliny and Pausanias. So far all was plain sailing. The attributions were admittedly risky, but the interest of the results seemed to justify the method.
Unfortunately the matter did not end here. While one party of excavators was working at Tegea, another party was unearthing a disconcerting inscription elsewhere. This suggested that a statue known as the “Agias,” a figure of an athlete found at Delphi, was a marble copy of a work by Lysippus. The discovery necessitated a fresh examination of fourth-century works, and as a result, such an authority as Mr. Percy Gardner now feels compelled to doubt whether the “[Meleager]” can be properly associated with the influence of Scopas any longer. Guided by resemblances to the “Agias,” he suggests that the “[Meleager]” is much more probably after a work by Lysippus.
But again the critical argument takes a fresh lease. For the “Agias” is found to resemble strongly the “Heracles” at Lansdowne House. Moreover, since neither possesses any of the strongly marked characteristics of the “[Apoxyomenus],” doubt is thrown upon the generally accepted attribution of that statue to Lysippus. What is the alternative? Mr. Percy Gardner has a suggestion at once. He turns to his Pliny (“Nat. Hist.” xxxiv. 87). The “‘[Apoxyomenus]’ is not a genuine fourth-century work; it is rather Hellenistic,” says he; “it may well be a copy of the Perixyomenus of Diappus, the son or pupil of Lysippus.”
We do not refer to the battle of the critics over Scopas, Praxiteles, and Lysippus at this length on account of the intrinsic value of the critical spoils. On the contrary, the value of the accumulation of evidence seems to us to be entirely negative. We are far from wishing to depreciate the value of such researches, but candour compels us to remind the amateur that the modern methods of critical research are full of pitfalls. One can scarcely steer too far from the hasty generalisation which can be so readily drawn from the necessarily flimsy evidence upon which the archæologist is compelled to rely.
“SARCOPHAGUS OF ALEXANDER”
Constantinople
For ourselves we prefer to regard the work of the critical school as scaffolding which will doubtless lead to a permanent erection of ascertained fact. The “[Ares],” the “[Meleager],” and the “[Apoxyomenus]” may be neither by Scopas nor Lysippus. It is sufficient if we can honestly detect in them the general characteristics of particular phases of fourth-century sculpture. The “[Mausoleum Charioteer],” the “[Menelaus and Patroclus],” and the “[Niobe]” group may none of them be the actual design or handiwork of Scopas. We cannot do more than detect in them the general characteristics of the period in which Scopas was a dominating influence. But there must have been a personality to popularise the new style—a brain and hand through whom the new artistic tendency first found expression. With all the reservations that these remarks imply, we give this personality the name of Scopas, and, as we said before, regard him 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.
So with Lysippus. The individual is not an essential element in the history of Greek sculpture. If he never lived, another sculptor “of the same name” gave plastic expression to the more realistic ideals aroused by the triumph of Macedonia. Some master inaugurated the realistic school, which persisted beside the idealistic, based upon the art of Praxiteles. Whether Lysippus, Diappus, or an unknown sculptor of the Hellenistic school moulded the “[Apoxyomenus]” is of small consequence. Moreover, when all is said and done, there is not much to choose between this position and that of Mr. Percy Gardner himself. As Mr. Frost has pointed out, the length of limb and lightness of frame seen in the “[Apoxyomenus]” are only the tendencies of the “Agias” carried a step further. When Mr. Percy Gardner goes on to suggest that the Vatican statue is not by the master but by the pupil, he practically accepts the general view we hold. Barring the “[Hermes]” of Praxiteles, it is practically impossible to attribute dogmatically any of the Hellenic sculptures to the craftsmanship of particular artists. Inscriptions, literary references, and further Greek originals, or Roman copies, may yet be found. For the present, the art lover will do well to content himself with realising the methods which the critical schools have adopted, and the path by which it seeks answers to the high problems it desires to solve.
We cannot pass from our consideration of the last effort of Hellenic sculpture proper without a reference to one other work associated with the Lysippic period. We mean the magnificent sarcophagus now at Constantinople, and sometimes called the “[Sarcophagus of Alexander].” This is clearly a Greek original produced about 300 b.c. It was found early in the last decade in the family vault of a Sidonian king at Saida, with several sarcophagi of the finest style. Those who cannot see the original, can gain a clear idea of the great work from the magnificent publication issued by Hamdi Bey, the discoverer, entitled “Une Necropole Royale de Sidon,” of which the British Museum possesses a copy. All sides of the sarcophagus are decorated with a wealth of sculptured design and ornament. Macedonians, Greeks, and Persians all take part in the scenes of battle and chase represented by the sculptor. The work is in the finest preservation. The silver bridles and weapons have been removed, but in all other respects it is perfect. One head is missing but this is due to an accident since its discovery. Even the original colours can be traced. Indeed, any one wishing to obtain a clear idea of the use the Greeks made of colour in sculpture cannot do better than study the fine coloured plates picturing the “[Sarcophagus of Alexander]” prepared for Hamdi Bey.
“PHOCION”
Vatican, Rome
GREEK PORTRAITURE
So far few references to the portrait sculptures of Greece either in the fifth or fourth century have been necessary. We have now, however, to redeem the promise to make clear the use Lysippus and his school made of realistic detail in this department of art. The opportunity suggests a few general remarks upon Hellenic portrait sculpture generally. Before the latter half of the fourth century there was no portraiture in Greece, in the modern sense of the word. That is to say, the sculptor made no effort to produce a realistic representation of the sitter. He rather sought to present a type suggested by the individual. Take, for instance, the British Museum bust of “[Pericles]”—probably a copy of the statue by Cresilas dedicated after the revolt of Samos (440 b.c.). This stood on the Acropolis, hard by the Lemnian “Athena” of Phidias, on the right-hand side as the Athenian passed up through the Propylæa. Even such a well-known figure as the warrior statesman is not highly individualised. The clear-cut brow and the broad mouth tell of the profound judgment and sober will needful to the man who gave Athenian policy its deepest and most imaginative characteristics. The voluptuous lips tell of the passionate emotionalism which brought Pericles into sympathy with his fellow countrymen, and which every true Athenian would have considered it inhuman to crush. But these characteristics are rather those of the ideal statesman which the Athenian system sought to produce. Every trait applicable to Pericles alone has been removed.
Much the same may be said of the well-known “Sophocles,” or the so-called “[Phocion]” in the Vatican, two of the finest Greek portraits of the best style extant. Both have all the strongly idealistic qualities of Hellenic portraiture before the Alexandrian age. Neither the “Sophocles” nor the “[Phocion]” can be termed portraits in the sense that the Roman busts are portraits. Both represent ideal types rather than individual personalities. The Greek thinker desired to look at everything from the universal point of view. He sought to form general abstract conceptions about humanity and nature, applicable to any and every part of the universe. The task of the Greek sculptor was, therefore, to produce figures embodying these types. Phocion was to him the incorruptible statesman. Sophocles was the typical Athenian gentleman—sound in body as in mind.
So when Lysippus set out to carve a portrait statue such as that preserved in the marble bust of “[Alexander]” in the British Museum, he did not picture the man or the king of Macedon, but the descendant of Achilles, whose mission it was to conquer the world. He abstracted every trait that endured but for the moment, and sought only to express the heroic side of the Macedonian character. Plutarch (“Life of Alexander”) tells of the impression this method made upon Alexander himself. We read:
“When Lysippus first made a portrait of Alexander with his countenance uplifted to heaven, just as Alexander was wont to gaze with his neck gently inclined to one side, some one wrote the following note in appropriate epigram:
‘The man of bronze is as one that looks on Zeus, and will address him thus: “O Zeus, I place earth beneath my feet, do thou rule Olympus.”’
PERICLES
Vatican, Rome
ALEXANDER
After Lysippus
“For this reason Alexander gave orders that only Lysippus should make portraits of him, since he alone, as it would seem, truly revealed his nature in bronze and portrayed his courage in visible form, while others in their anxiety to reproduce the bend of the neck, and the melting look of the eyes, failed to preserve his masculine and leonine aspect.”
The portraits of Lysippus therefore differ from such an ideal figure as the “[Pericles]” in the skilful use made of realism. The portrait is cast in an heroic mould, but this is not obtained at the expense of all likeness. Note the way in which the peculiar eyes of the king and the turn of his neck have been utilised.
The change was not entirely for the better. The passage from Plutarch itself suggests where an artist of less than the front rank would fail. The followers of Lysippus were not content to make this sparing use of detail. Forgetful that general truths and general emotions can be embodied in marble and bronze most clearly and therefore most properly, they made realistic detail an end in itself. Pliny tells of Lysistratus of Sicyon, a brother of Lysippus, and says that he introduced the practice of “life-like portraiture,” previous artists having sought “to accentuate the more beautiful qualities of the sitter.” From this it was but a step to the work of Demetrius of Alopece, whose portraits were so realistic that Lucian called him “the maker of men” rather than the “maker of statues.”
Lucian’s phrase reminds us that we have brought our survey of Hellenic sculpture to a close. The downfall of the city-state system militated against those habits of thought which ever aimed at eliminating every trait applicable to the individual object, and which were so essentially Hellenic. When the aristocratic or monarchical rule of the country-state was substituted, the rural voter no longer troubled to exercise his franchise. He left the duty of recording a vote to the townsmen on the spot. The earlier constant contact with actuality became a thing of the past.
Speaking of the essential quality of Greek sculpture, Pater has said:
“Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture, minute, severe, constantly renewed, and concentrating its impressions into certain pregnant types.”
These words exactly describe the relation of Greek sculpture to general culture during the fifth and fourth centuries. When Greece failed to withstand Macedonia, the entire current of social and political life changed. A culture which had been Hellenic became Hellenistic.