A History of Art for Beginners and Students: Painting, Sculpture, Architecture

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

Fig. 37.—A Wounded Amazon.
Cresilas.

Fig. 38.—Statue of Pericles.
Cresilas.

The sculptor Myron also had pupils and followers who executed many works, and of this school was Cresilas of Cydonia, in Crete. We are interested in him because two copies from his works exist, of which I give pictures here. Pliny, in speaking of the portrait statue of Pericles, said it was a marvel of the art "which makes illustrious men still more illustrious." The cut given here is from a bust in the British Museum. There is reason to believe that Cresilas excelled Myron in the expression of his faces (Figs. 37, 38).

Callimachus is an artist of whom we know little, but that little is interesting. We do not know where he was born, but as he was employed to make a candelabra for the eternal lamp which burned before the sacred statue of Athena Polias, we may suppose that he was an Athenian. Some writers say that he invented a lamp which would burn a year without going out, and that such an one made of gold was the work he did for the temple of Minerva. Callimachus lived between B.C. 550 and 396, and is credited with having invented the Corinthian capital in this wise: A young girl of Corinth died, and her nurse, according to custom, placed a basket upon her grave containing the food she had loved best in life. It chanced that the basket was put down upon a young acanthus plant, and the leaves grew up about the basket in such a way that when Callimachus saw it the design for the capital which we know as Corinthian was suggested to him, and was thus named from the city in which all this had occurred.

While the plastic art of Athens, or the Attic school of sculpture, reached its greatest excellence in Phidias, there was in the Peloponnesus another school of much importance. Argos was the chief city of this school, and its best master was Polycleitus of Sicyon, who was born about B.C. 482. He was thus about twelve years younger than Phidias. Polycleitus was held in such esteem that many of the ancient writers couple his name with that of Phidias. He was employed in the decoration of the Heraion, or temple of Hera, at Argos. But his greatest work was a statue of Hera, or Juno, for a temple on Mount Eubœa, between Argos and Mycenæ. This statue was chryselephantine, and as Juno was the majestic, white-armed, ox-eyed goddess consort of Jupiter, it is a striking coincidence that Phidias at Olympia and Polycleitus on Mount Eubœa should have made from ivory and gold two famous statues of this renowned pair, who reigned over the mythical world of the Greek religion. There are several copies of heads of Juno in various museums, and some of them have been ascribed to Polycleitus; but the proof of the truth of this is far from being satisfactory. This master made other statues of divinities, but he excelled in representing athletes; and however fine his other works may have been, it was in the reproduction of strong, youthful, manly beauty that he surpassed other sculptors. Some of his statues of this sort, especially a Doryphorus, or spear-bearer, were considered as models from which all other artists could work.

Polycleitus is said to have written a treatise in which he gave exact rules for the proportions of the different parts of the body. This was called "the canon" of Polycleitus, and there is good reason to believe that the Doryphorus was called by the same name, "the canon," because it was fashioned according to the rules laid down by Polycleitus in his treatise. His pupils and followers are mentioned with honor by the Greek authors of his time, but I need not mention them here.

The art of Phidias and Polycleitus was the art of Greece at its best period. After the close of the Persian wars the people of Greece were a religious and patriotic people. The Persian wars developed the best quality of character, for these wars were waged against a foreign foe, and the Greeks were defending their freedom and their civilization, and at the end of the struggle Pericles, who guided them to their greatest prosperity, was a statesman and a man of high aims; he was a gentleman as well as a strong ruler. The Peloponnesian war, on the contrary, was a civil war, and it divided the Greeks among themselves and roused the evil passions of friend against friend all over their country. It was the cause of selfishness, treachery, and immorality, and one of its worst effects was seen in the loss of religious tone among the people: their old contented simplicity of life and thought was gone; every man thought only of himself, and the nation began to sink into the condition which at last made it an easy prey to the Macedonians. We have studied all these wars in our histories, but perhaps we have not thought how much they affected sculpture and the other arts, and brought them down from the lofty heights of the Periclean age.

But there were still men who strove to be great and grand in morals and in intellect, and perhaps strove all the more earnestly for this on account of the decline they saw about them. Few countries in any age have had more splendid men than Socrates, Plato, Euripides, Aristophanes, Pelopidas, Epaminondas, Demosthenes, Dion, and Timoleon, and these all lived between the Peloponnesian and the Macedonian wars. And while the arts were less grand than before, they did not fall into decline for some years, though they took on new features. The gods who had been mostly represented were less often the subjects of the sculptor, and when they were so they were softened and made less awful in their effect. Other gods were more freely taken for models, such as came nearer to human life and thought, because less sublime in their attributes and characters. Among these were Venus as a lovely woman rather than as the great mother of all living creatures, and Eros, or Love; while Plutus, or Wealth, and satyrs, nymphs, and tritons were multiplied in great numbers.

When the gods who were represented were more like human beings in their character, it followed that the statues of them more nearly resembled men and women, and gradually the old grandeur and sublimity were changed to grace, beauty, and mirth. Many people would prefer these works because they come nearer to the every-day life of the world; but earnest, thoughtful minds look for something more noble in art—something that will not come down to us as we are, but will help us to rise above ourselves and to strive after better things.