“Him, who from eternity, self-stirred, Himself hath made by His creative word.”
They strove to convey, not only the impressions realised by their brothers, the scientists, but the emotions astir in their own hearts. What matter if the scientists proved these “ideal types” to be mere lies. The artists felt that the unconscious criticism of nature revealed truths far beyond those at which the conscious criticism of science stopped.
THE BARBERINE HERA
Vatican, Rome
By the middle of the fifth century the Greek artist had realized that his true task was not to strive to copy the known, but, “hungry for the infinite,” to seek the ideal whose home was in the unknown. The inmost revelations vouchsafed to Greek thought and imagination in the fifth century found expression in the great temple statues. Earlier they had been embodied in such poems as the “Iliad” and the “Odyssey.” Later they were to find expression in the dialogues of Plato. But between 450 b.c. and 400 b.c. the natural philosophy of the Greek world was embodied in such sculptures as the “[Zeus]” of Olympia and the “[Hera]” of Argos. That is why we call the second half of the fifth century “the golden age of Greek sculpture.” Then, and only then, did it embody all Greek thought; then, and only then, were the workers in marble and bronze inspired to express the passion for physical beauty, the fierce pride in citizenship, as well as the deepest thoughts upon nature and humanity.
The passion for physical beauty found material expression in the great series of athletic sculptures of Argos and Athens. The Parthenon was the outcome of the Hellene’s civic pride. The deepest philosophical beliefs of the fifth-century Greek are to be found in such statues as the “[Zeus Otricoli]” and the “[Hera Ludovisi].” These are certainly the finest conceptions of the great god and goddess which have been preserved to us. Both are based on the statues of Phidias and Polyclitus, though there are traces of a more sensuous and florid taste than would have been possible in the fifth century. In the head of Zeus, for instance, the suggestion of awful power is lacking. The great sculptor working under the inspiration of Homer’s lines: “Spake the Son of Cronus and nodded thereto with swart brows and the ambrosial lock of the King rolled backward from his immortal head and the heights of Olympus quaked,” could not have missed this. The two heads convey all the beauty of the first conceptions, but they lack the serene austerity—the stern aloofness—that we may be sure characterized the work of Phidias and Polyclitus. The fifth-century artists were appealing to men who preserved a measure of unreasoning faith in the gods of their fathers.
The beautiful full length “[Barbarian Hera],” in the Vatican Collection, represents a step further in the emphasizing of sensuous charm, and consequently there is even less insistence upon the severe beauty which the fifth-century sculptor sought to portray. To be understood the statue must be regarded as a work of the fourth century, and be judged by the standards of Scopas and Praxiteles.
The ideal head of Asclepius, in the British Museum, which has been ascribed to Thrasymedes of Paros, the sculptor of the great chryselephantine statue at Epidaurus, is a work bearing a strong resemblance to the “[Zeus Otricoli].” It was found in the Island of Melos, in a shrine dedicated to the Physician of the Gods, hence the title. The expression of the God of Healing, whose worship was so general in Greece at one time that it threatened to become almost universal, is, however, more kindly and human than that of Zeus. It is a beautiful example of the joyousness and sweet reasonableness which Greek sculpture possessed through contact with a system of religious belief which left the intelligence unhampered and the human emotions free. It is true that the religion of ancient Greece lacked the driving power of other and more potent faiths. It was not based upon such personalities as Buddha, Moses, or, greatest of all, the Founder of the faith which eventually Hellenized the Western world. But for a few short years the humane and tolerant religion of Greece was all-sufficient. Any one who would have abundant proof has only to stand for a few minutes before the marbles which sum up and express the Greek belief in an entirely reasonable and beautiful world.