Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

THE STYLES OF SKOPAS AND LYSIPPOS COMPARED.

Fig. 74.—Attic Grave-Relief, found in the Bed of the Ilissos, Athens. National Museum, Athens.

In view, then, of the differences enumerated I should hesitate to assign a Skopaic origin to the head from Sparta. In the lower part of the face, with its small mouth and delicate chin, I see signs only of Praxitelean influence; in the upper part I am much more inclined to see affinities to the art-tendencies of Lysippos, as we now know them from the statue of Agias. In the present state of our knowledge it is not difficult to separate works of Praxitelean origin from those of Skopas; but it is a very different thing to distinguish those of Skopaic origin from those of Lysippos; here the line distinguishing the two masters is much finer and harder to draw. Before the discovery of the Tegea heads, the deep-set eye,[2145] prominent brow, and “breathing” mouth were looked upon as characteristic features of Lysippos, as they were known to us from representations of Alexander, especially on coins. We now know that these traits belonged to Skopas to a much greater extent. When the Agias was found, and before its true authorship had been determined, Homolle, as we have seen, had at first classed it as showing the manner of Lysippos, only later to see more of Skopas than Lysippos in it. Such a conclusion was natural so long as we regarded the Apoxyomenos as the key to Lysippan art. By assigning these traits definitely to Skopas, we were compelled to view the work of Lysippos as conventional and somewhat lifeless in comparison. But with the assumption that the statue of Agias represented true Lysippan characteristics, we were forced to recognize that the same traits belonged to Lysippos also, though to a less degree, since the energy of the Tegea heads was absent from the features of the Agias and their fierceness was here replaced by a look of quiet melancholy. The study of such allied works as the beautiful and excellently preserved Lansdowne Herakles (Pl. [30] and Fig. [71]), the athlete on the Pentelic marble stele found in the bed of the Ilissos in 1874, and now in the National Museum in Athens (Fig. [74]),[2146] the so-called Meleager in the Vatican (Fig. [75]),[2147] and other copies of the same original (e. g., Figs. 76, 77), also shows how closely the type of Lysippos approached that of Skopas. Long ago I expressed the view[2148] that these and similar works should be assigned to Lysippos rather than to Skopas, to whom most critics had referred them. Thus, after the discovery of the Tegea heads, scholarly opinion began to follow the arguments of Furtwaengler in bringing the Lansdowne Herakles into the sphere of Skopas.[2149] But Michaelis, as far back as 1882, commenting on the characteristically small head,

Fig. 75.—Statue of the so-called Meleager. Vatican Museum, Rome. short neck in comparison with the mighty shoulders, and long legs in proportion to the thick-set torso, had declared: “Without doubt the statue offers one of the finest specimens, if not absolutely the best, of a Herakles according to the conception of Lysippos.”[2150] Now opinion varies again; only those who believe that the Agias is Lysippan class the Herakles as a Lysippan work.[2151] Of the Meleager, Graef[2152] gives eighteen copies besides the one in the Vatican. This number shows how common an adornment it was of Roman villas and parks. Some of these copies have a chlamys thrown over the arm, e. g., the Vatican example, and belong to imperial times, while others without the mantle, e. g., the torso in Berlin,[2153] are older. In addition to the Vatican example we reproduce two other copies, the beautiful Parian marble head now placed on the trunk of a Praxitelean Apollo in the gardens of the Medici in Rome (Fig. [76]),[2154] and the statue without arms or legs and without the chlamys, found in 1895 near Santa Marinella, 30 miles from Rome, and since 1899 in the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University (Fig. [77]),[2155] one of the most beautiful of the many replicas. At first the original of these copies was supposed to be Lysippan, being identified with the Venator at Thespiai mentioned by Pliny as the work of Euthykrates, the son and pupil of Lysippos,[2156] but after the discovery of the Tegea heads it was almost universally referred to Skopas.[2157] Here again the Skopaic group of Graef has been broken by P. Gardner[2158] and others, and the Meleager, like the Herakles, has been given to Lysippos.

Fig. 76.—Head of the so-called Meleager. Villa Medici, Rome.

Let us analyze a little further wherein the difference between the closely allied art of Skopas and Lysippos lies. We saw that it was chiefly the formation of the eye and its surroundings which characterized

Fig. 77.—Torso of the so-called Meleager. Fogg Art Museum, Cambridge, U. S. A. Skopaic work—the depth of the balls in their sockets, and the heavy masses of flesh above the outer corners. This was in harmony with the breadth of brow and the massive build of the Tegea heads. In the Agias and similar works the treatment of the eye is somewhat different. The head of the Agias is of slighter proportions than the heads from Tegea; in conformity with the Lysippan canon it is below life-size, and consequently has no such heavy overshadowing of the outer corners of the eyes. Moreover, as we shall see, this overshadowing is also relatively less in the statue of the Delphian athlete. The formation of the eye is thus described by E. A. Gardner:

“The inner corners of the eye are set very deep in the head and very close together; the inner corners of the eye-sockets form acute angles, running up close to one another and leaving between them only a narrow ridge for the base of the nose; thus they offer a strong contrast to the line of the brow, arching away in a broad curve from the solid base of the nose and forming an obtuse angle with it, such as we see in the Skopaic heads.”[2159]

The resultant expression is therefore somewhat different from that of the heads from Tegea; while we still see animation and even intensity in the face of the Agias, we see it in a modified degree. The far-away look of the Tegea heads is still present, but it appears to be fixed on a nearer object, and so the look of intensity is tempered; it is also lightened by the fact that the overshadowing of the eyes at the outer corners is less heavy. But even this latter so-called Skopaic trait, though it is absent in the Agias, is certainly present in other Lysippan heads. Besides being prominent in representations of Alexander the Great on coins,[2160] it is seen in busts of the conqueror, especially in the splendid one from Alexandria in the British Museum.[2161] In the latter example we see just such heavy rolls of flesh as we note in the Skopaic heads. It shows that this trait, introduced by Skopas, was used at times with equal effect by Lysippos. We have already noted how in one example, at least, Skopas himself laid it aside—in the Atalanta. Its presence on Lysippan heads shows that too much stress can be laid on this feature in deciding whether a given piece of sculpture is to be referred to Skopas. This trait complicates the whole problem of the style of the two masters.