Vatican, Rome
APOXYOMENUS (SCHOOL OF LYSIPPUS)
Vatican, Rome
But what strikes us first is not the resemblance to the athletic sculptures of Polyclitus, but the marked difference. The subject is of the genre order, which in itself denotes a change. Wrestlers were wont to anoint their bodies with oil and besprinkle themselves with fine sand in order to afford a firm grip. Here we see the athlete scraping the oil-soaked sand from his limbs with a strigil.
But the difference goes still deeper. A physique that would serve the State in good stead at any moment was clearly the essential to the youth who posed for the “Diadumenus” of Polyclitus. Above all, there was no suggestion of training for a single event. The “[Apoxyomenus],” on the contrary, rather recalls the system of our own day, in which particular muscle, rather than balanced strength, is the prime desideratum. To-day the athlete never loses sight of the fact that a definite contest has to be won on a fixed date. Mr. K. T. Frost, in a delightful criticism of the “[Apoxyomenus]” from the point of view of the athletic anatomist, couples the work with the well-known “Fighting Warrior” of Agasias, now in the Louvre. “Both,” he says, “have the physical characteristics which we associate with the thoroughbred.” Comparing them with other Greek athletic statues, he shows that the back and trunk in the earlier works depend for strength upon the general solidity of the frame, not on specially developed muscles. This, as he proves, is not the case with the “[Apoxyomenus],” though the steel-like tendons and sinews prevent the resulting slimness from suggesting any lack of power.
MODERN SCULPTURAL CRITICISM
The “[Apoxyomenus],” since its discovery in 1849, has always been associated with the name of Lysippus. It certainly shows all the features which are usually associated with his style, including the small head, the long limbs, and the life-like animation which he strove to express in his figures.
The attribution of these characteristics originally depended upon the interpretation placed upon various references to Lysippus in the classical authors. A passage in Pliny, for instance, speaks of his “Constantia,” and seems to suggest that a sleepless regard for truth in detail was a prime feature of the Lysippic style. When we add to this the passages relating to his pupils, we can scarcely fail to regard Lysippus as the founder of the realistic school, which was opposed throughout the Hellenistic age to the more fanciful and idealistic art based upon the marbles of Praxiteles. When we come to the consideration of the portraits of the Lysippic school, we shall see that realism to Lysippus did not mean exactitude to life. He always sought to add that rhythmic beauty which Nature never supplies, but which every true artist, and especially every great Greek sculptor, is persuaded lies at the root of art.
It was upon such evidence as this that the “[Apoxyomenus]” was attributed to Lysippus. Practically all the well-known and frequently copied sculptures are attributed to the famous sculptors of antiquity upon similar grounds.