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

by Clara Erskine Clement Waters

Fig. 50.—The Apoxyomenos of Lysippus.

Lysippus cannot be said to have followed any school; he was original, and this trait made him prominent, for he was not bound by old customs, but was able to adapt himself to the new spirit of the age, which came to Greece with the reign of Alexander. This sculptor made a great number of statues of Hercules; and as Alexander loved to regard himself as a modern Hercules, Lysippus also represented the monarch in many different ways, and with much the same spirit as that he put into the statues of the hero-god. For example, he made a statue of "Alexander with his Spear," "Alexander at a Lion Hunt," "Alexander as the Sun-God," and so on through many changes of expression and attributes, but all being likenesses of the great king. There is in the Capitol at Rome a head of Alexander called Helios, which is thought by many critics to be the best bust of him in existence. There are metal rays fastened to the head; it has a wild, Bacchus-like air, and the hair is thrown back, as if he had shaken his head furiously; and the defect of a wry neck, which the monarch had, is cleverly concealed by this motion. Alexander was a very handsome man, his faults being this twist in his neck and a peculiar shape of the eye.

We cannot here give the long list of works by Lysippus, but will speak of that which interests us most, because we have a beautiful copy of it. I mean the Apoxyomenos, which is in the Vatican. It represents a youth scraping himself (as the name denotes) with the strigil after a contest in the arena (Fig. 50). The Vatican copy was found in the Trastevere at Rome in 1849, and is well preserved. Without doubt it is a faithful reproduction of the original, which was probably brought from Greece to Rome by Agrippa, who set it up in front of his public baths. Here it became such a favorite with the people that when Tiberius removed it to his own house there was a demonstration in the theatre, and so violent a demand was made for its restoration that the cunning emperor dared not refuse. This statue may be called an example of a grand genre style. It represents a scene from common life in Greece, but it is so simply natural, so graceful and free from restraint, that one could not weary of it. The expression of the face is that of quiet content—his task has been faithfully done, and the remembrance of it is pleasant. The hair is finely executed; this was a point in which Lysippus excelled; but the great charm of the whole is in the pose of the figure. In his occupation of scraping one portion of the body after another he must constantly change his position, and this one, in which he can rest but a moment, seems to have the motion in it which he must almost instantly make, while it is full of easy grace in itself. The art of Lysippus was not as elevated as that of Phidias, who tried to represent the highest ideal which a mortal may form of a god; but there was nothing mean or vulgar in the works of the former; on the contrary, it was with a pure and noble spirit that he endeavored to represent the perfections of youthful, manly beauty, and his naturalism was of a healthy and dignified sort.

The most important pupil of Lysippus was Chares Of Lindos, who was prominent not only on account of his own works, but also because he introduced the art of Sicyon into his native island of Rhodes. This island is but forty-five miles long and twenty miles wide at its broadest part, and yet its art became second only to that of Athens.

At the city of Rhodes alone there were three thousand statues, besides many paintings and other rare and beautiful objects. Chares is best known for the sun-god which he erected here; it was called the "Colossus of Rhodes," and was reckoned as one of the seven wonders of the world. One hundred statues of the sun were erected at Rhodes, and Pliny says that any one of them was beautiful enough to have been famous; but that of Chares was so remarkable that it overshadowed all the rest.

It stood quite near the entrance to the harbor of Rhodes, but we have no reason to believe that its legs spanned the mouth of the port so that ships sailed between them, as has often been said, although its size was almost beyond our imagination. The statue was one hundred and five feet high, and few men could reach around one of its thumbs with their arms, while each finger was as large as most statues. Twelve years were occupied in its erection, from B.C. 292 to 280, and it cost three hundred talents, or about $300,000 of our money, according to its usual estimate, though there are those who name its cost as more than four times that amount. The men of Rhodes obtained this great sum by selling the engines of war which Demetrius Poliorcetes left behind him when he abandoned the siege of Rhodes in B.C. 303. We have no copy of this statue, but there are coins of Rhodes which bear a face that is believed with good reason to be that of the Colossus.

Fifty-six years after its completion, in B.C. 224, the Colossus was overthrown by an earthquake, and an oracle forbade the restoration of it by the Rhodians. In A.D. 672, nearly a thousand years after its fall, its fragments were sold to a Jew of Emesa by the command of the Caliph Othman IV. It is said that they weighed seven hundred thousand pounds, and nine hundred camels were required to bear them away. When we consider what care must have been needful to cast this huge figure in bronze, and so adjust the separate parts that the whole would satisfy the standard of art at Rhodes, we are not surprised that it should have been reckoned among the seven wonders, and that Chares should have become a famous master.

Chares also founded a school of art which became very important, and, indeed, it seems to have been the continuance of the school of the Peloponnesus; for after the time of Lysippus the sculpture of Argos and Sicyon came to an end, and we may add that with Lysippus and his school the growth of art in Greece ceased; it had reached the highest point to which it ever attained, and all its later works were of its decline, and foreshadowed its death.

The reign of Alexander the Great was so brilliant that it is difficult to realize that it was a time of decline to the Greeks; and during the life of Alexander perhaps this does not appear with clearness; but at the close of his reign there arose such contentions and troubles among his generals that everything in Greece suffered, and with the rest Greek art was degraded. In the time of Pericles it was thought to be a crime in him that he permitted his portrait to be put upon the shield of the Parthenon, and he was prosecuted for thus exalting himself to a privilege which belonged to the gods alone. Alexander, on the contrary, claimed to be a god, and was represented by painters and sculptors until his portraits and statues were almost numberless.

Soon after the death of Alexander the humiliation of Athens and its old Periclean spirit was complete. If you read the history of Demetrius Poliorcetes, who was even allowed to hold his revels in the most sacred part of the Parthenon—the temple of Minerva—you will see that Athens was enslaved and her people no longer worthy to lead the world in the arts of peace, as they were no longer the brave men who could stand first in war. In their degraded state the Athenians suffered three hundred and sixty statues to be erected to Demetrius Phalereus, and these were destroyed to make way for the golden images of the conquering freebooter Poliorcetes. This last was hailed by the debased people as a god and a saviour. His name and that of his father, Antigonus, were woven into the sacred peplos.