THE HEAD FROM OLYMPIA.
Impressed by its remarkable likeness to the head of the Agias, I hazarded the opinion some years ago,[2058] that the much discussed Pentelic marble head from Olympia ([Frontispiece] and Figure [69])[2059] was Lysippan,
Fig. 69.—Marble Head, from Olympia. Museum of Olympia. and attempted to bring it into relation with the statue of the Akarnanian pancratiast (whose name I restored as Philandridas), which Pausanias[2060] says was the work of Lysippos. Since then, after a careful revision of the evidence, this earlier opinion has become conviction, and I now have no hesitancy in expressing the belief that in this vigorous marble head we have to do with an original work by Lysippos himself. It will be our task briefly to rehearse the reasons for making such an ascription, despite the serious and weighty objections which might be raised against it.
At first this head was ascribed with surprising unanimity to the school of Praxiteles,[2061] and subsequently, after the discovery of the Tegea heads, with almost equal unanimity to that of Skopas. Treu, who first published the head,[2062] pointed out its near relationship to the Hermes of Praxiteles, which appeared to him to be obvious, notwithstanding the injured condition of the chin, nose, mouth, and brows. He found the general proportions, the shape of the cranium and forehead, and the form of the cheeks and mouth the same in both, while the differences, such as the deeper cut and wider opened eyes with their γοργόν expression, the hair, and the fact that the head is harder, leaner, and bonier than that of the Hermes, were all explained by the different character given to the statue of a victor or Herakles. Many other archæologists, as Boetticher,[2063] Laloux and Monceaux,[2064] and Furtwaengler,[2065] have also seen sure signs of the hand of Praxiteles or his school in the graceful attitude, delicate chiseling, and finish of the work. Still others,[2066] however, found every characteristic of Skopas in this head. Even Treu in his later treatment of the head found it more Skopaic than Praxitelian, and yet, by a careful analysis,[2067] he conclusively showed that the formation of the eyes, the opening of the mouth, and the treatment of the hair were so different in the heads from Tegea (and especially in that of the Herakles, Fig. [73]) as to preclude the possibility of assigning them and the head from Olympia to the same sculptor, and so declared for some independent sculptor among the contemporaries of Skopas. However, he did not see Lysippos in this allied but independent artist, though he admitted the resemblance of the head in question to that of the Agias, as also Homolle,[2068] Mahler,[2069] and other critics have done.