After this beginning Dibutades went on to perfect his art. He made medallions and busts, and decorated the beautiful Grecian structures with his work, and work in bas-relief became the most beautiful ornamentation of the splendid temples and theatres of Greece. He also founded a school for modelling at Sicyon, and became so famous an artist that several Greek cities claim the honor of having been his birthplace.
The bas-relief made from Kora's outline was preserved in the Nymphæum at Corinth for almost two hundred years, but was then destroyed by fire. She married her lover, and he became a famous artist at Corinth.
We have said that accounts of individual artists exist from about 700 B.C.; but these accounts are of so general a character and so wanting in detail that I shall pass on about two hundred years, after saying a few words of the advance made in the arts of sculpture, and mentioning a few of the examples which remain from that early time, which is called the Archaic period. This expression not only means an ancient period of art, but carries also the idea of an obsolete art—of something that is not only ancient, but something that is no longer practised in the same manner or by the same people as existed in this ancient or archaic time. During this archaic period a beginning was made in many branches of plastic art. There were statues in metal and marble, bas-reliefs in various kinds of stone and marble, as well as some chryselephantine statues. This kind of work is often said to have been invented by Phidias, but the truth seems to be that he was not its inventor, but carried it to great perfection. These chryselephantine statues were made of wood and then covered with ivory and gold; the ivory was used for the flesh parts of the statue, and gold for the drapery and ornaments of the figure, and the finished work was very brilliant in its effect.
Fig. 15.—Lion devouring Deer.
The principal subjects represented in the sculpture of the archaic period were connected with the religion of the Greeks, which is known to us as mythology. Most statues were of the gods, but portrait statues were not unknown, and the custom of setting up statues of the victors in the Greek games dates back to this very early time. This was a custom which afforded a large field for sculptors to work in, and must have had a great influence to give life and progress to their art.
Of the remains of this art very interesting things have been written, but I shall speak only of a few such objects of which pictures can be given to aid you in understanding about them. Among the earliest reliefs that have been preserved are those now in the Museum of the Louvre, at Paris, which were found in the ruins of a Doric temple at Assos (Fig. 15).
Fig. 16.—Heracles, Triton, and Nereids.
