GREEK PORTRAITURE
So far few references to the portrait sculptures of Greece either in the fifth or fourth century have been necessary. We have now, however, to redeem the promise to make clear the use Lysippus and his school made of realistic detail in this department of art. The opportunity suggests a few general remarks upon Hellenic portrait sculpture generally. Before the latter half of the fourth century there was no portraiture in Greece, in the modern sense of the word. That is to say, the sculptor made no effort to produce a realistic representation of the sitter. He rather sought to present a type suggested by the individual. Take, for instance, the British Museum bust of “[Pericles]”—probably a copy of the statue by Cresilas dedicated after the revolt of Samos (440 b.c.). This stood on the Acropolis, hard by the Lemnian “Athena” of Phidias, on the right-hand side as the Athenian passed up through the Propylæa. Even such a well-known figure as the warrior statesman is not highly individualised. The clear-cut brow and the broad mouth tell of the profound judgment and sober will needful to the man who gave Athenian policy its deepest and most imaginative characteristics. The voluptuous lips tell of the passionate emotionalism which brought Pericles into sympathy with his fellow countrymen, and which every true Athenian would have considered it inhuman to crush. But these characteristics are rather those of the ideal statesman which the Athenian system sought to produce. Every trait applicable to Pericles alone has been removed.
Much the same may be said of the well-known “Sophocles,” or the so-called “[Phocion]” in the Vatican, two of the finest Greek portraits of the best style extant. Both have all the strongly idealistic qualities of Hellenic portraiture before the Alexandrian age. Neither the “Sophocles” nor the “[Phocion]” can be termed portraits in the sense that the Roman busts are portraits. Both represent ideal types rather than individual personalities. The Greek thinker desired to look at everything from the universal point of view. He sought to form general abstract conceptions about humanity and nature, applicable to any and every part of the universe. The task of the Greek sculptor was, therefore, to produce figures embodying these types. Phocion was to him the incorruptible statesman. Sophocles was the typical Athenian gentleman—sound in body as in mind.
So when Lysippus set out to carve a portrait statue such as that preserved in the marble bust of “[Alexander]” in the British Museum, he did not picture the man or the king of Macedon, but the descendant of Achilles, whose mission it was to conquer the world. He abstracted every trait that endured but for the moment, and sought only to express the heroic side of the Macedonian character. Plutarch (“Life of Alexander”) tells of the impression this method made upon Alexander himself. We read:
“When Lysippus first made a portrait of Alexander with his countenance uplifted to heaven, just as Alexander was wont to gaze with his neck gently inclined to one side, some one wrote the following note in appropriate epigram:
‘The man of bronze is as one that looks on Zeus, and will address him thus: “O Zeus, I place earth beneath my feet, do thou rule Olympus.”’
PERICLES
Vatican, Rome
