ALEXANDER
After Lysippus
“For this reason Alexander gave orders that only Lysippus should make portraits of him, since he alone, as it would seem, truly revealed his nature in bronze and portrayed his courage in visible form, while others in their anxiety to reproduce the bend of the neck, and the melting look of the eyes, failed to preserve his masculine and leonine aspect.”
The portraits of Lysippus therefore differ from such an ideal figure as the “[Pericles]” in the skilful use made of realism. The portrait is cast in an heroic mould, but this is not obtained at the expense of all likeness. Note the way in which the peculiar eyes of the king and the turn of his neck have been utilised.
The change was not entirely for the better. The passage from Plutarch itself suggests where an artist of less than the front rank would fail. The followers of Lysippus were not content to make this sparing use of detail. Forgetful that general truths and general emotions can be embodied in marble and bronze most clearly and therefore most properly, they made realistic detail an end in itself. Pliny tells of Lysistratus of Sicyon, a brother of Lysippus, and says that he introduced the practice of “life-like portraiture,” previous artists having sought “to accentuate the more beautiful qualities of the sitter.” From this it was but a step to the work of Demetrius of Alopece, whose portraits were so realistic that Lucian called him “the maker of men” rather than the “maker of statues.”
Lucian’s phrase reminds us that we have brought our survey of Hellenic sculpture to a close. The downfall of the city-state system militated against those habits of thought which ever aimed at eliminating every trait applicable to the individual object, and which were so essentially Hellenic. When the aristocratic or monarchical rule of the country-state was substituted, the rural voter no longer troubled to exercise his franchise. He left the duty of recording a vote to the townsmen on the spot. The earlier constant contact with actuality became a thing of the past.
Speaking of the essential quality of Greek sculpture, Pater has said:
“Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture, minute, severe, constantly renewed, and concentrating its impressions into certain pregnant types.”
These words exactly describe the relation of Greek sculpture to general culture during the fifth and fourth centuries. When Greece failed to withstand Macedonia, the entire current of social and political life changed. A culture which had been Hellenic became Hellenistic.