History of Ancient Art

by Franz von Reber

The influence of Attica and Argos not only prevailed in Greece proper, but made itself felt even in the most remote colonies. The Zeus upon one of the metopes of the southern temple on the eastern plateau of Selinous (Fig. 220) may have been developed from the figures of Zeus by Ageladas, and suggests the sculptures of the Olympian temple which was completed about the same time. This metope represents Zeus fascinated by Hera upon Mount Ida (Il. xiv. 300), and the artist, in his figure of the god, has surpassed his former efforts, but the Hera is harder and more antique. The other well-preserved metopes of this temple—one of which shows a Heracles in strife with Amazons, and the other Actaion lacerated by dogs—though not without provincial weakness, have an unmistakable affinity to those of the Theseion. These were nearly contemporaneous, but an entire generation later there appeared at Messene, in the most remote part of the Peloponnesos, the sculptor Damophon, an artist decidedly of the Pheidian style, on account of which he was called to restore the Olympian statue, already warped and disjointed. Although a sculptor of ability, it would seem that he did not entirely withstand the current of a new direction in art; besides the statues in the Pheidian circle of divinities, others were ascribed to him, of a nature similar to those cultivated by preference during the succeeding period of Attic sculpture. The progressive force inherent in the people and in the art of Greece did not rest until the highest point had everywhere been reached. This impulse afterwards led to excess and decadence, permitting no lasting enjoyment of the previous gains. The art of Polycleitos prevailed somewhat longer in the Peloponnesos, the Dorians being by nature conservative, but in Attica the new elements early obtained a sway which could not but essentially change the character of all Hellenic sculpture. The frieze upon the Temple of the Wingless Victory in Athens, and the somewhat coarser one within the naos of Phigalea, began already to give evidence of an inclination towards the pathetic and passionate; the sculptures also upon the balustrade of the Athenian temple, executed probably about 390 to 380 B.C., appear to be the unmistakable forerunners of a new style. The Athenian Kephisodotos the elder stood, so to speak, upon the threshold of this transformation. His position in the history of art is assured by the fortunate discovery of a copy of his Eirene with Ploutos, now in the Glyptothek at Munich (Fig. 221). This work combined the tendencies of the new Attic style with those of Pheidias. Though the noble simplicity and grandeur, the earnestness and strictness, of the earlier period still remained, there had already dawned an expression of deeper feeling, and of a more spiritual life.

The representation, as Friederichs says, of the deep interchange of affection between mother and child, as shown in the Eirene of Kephisodotos, united with much of the hardness of the older works, culminated in two masters—the Parian Scopas and the Athenian Praxiteles, the latter possibly the son of Kephisodotos. Their productions were so nearly related that, even in antiquity, it was doubtful whether a work of celebrity should be ascribed to one or to the other. The chief creations of both were statues of the deities, both worked in marble, choosing this material not by chance, but from the nature of their subjects. With the exception of such colossal figures, of a highly monumental character, as the chryselephantine statues of Zeus and Athene Parthenos by Pheidias, and the Hera by Polycleitos, the delicate beauty of soft and transparent stone was best fitted for the images of deities enshrined within the temple; bronze, on the contrary, is peculiarly suited to statues of victors and athletes intended for outdoor exposure. It was on this account that it had been so largely employed by Myron and Polycleitos.

The Raging Bacchante, designated by epigrams and descriptions as the most celebrated work of Scopas, was one of the first masterpieces of antiquity. The head was thrown back in an ecstasy of passion, the hair loosened, and the long garment fluttering in the wind; thus did the Mainad appear rushing to the heights of Kithairon, holding in her hands the kid rent in her fury. If the rhetor Kallistratos was, as he says, speechless at sight of the countenance, admiring particularly the expression of a soul stung into madness, we can well believe that passion itself was embodied in this work. The excitement was more moderate in the Apollo of the Temple of Nemesis at Rhamnous, brought by Augustus to the Palatine, playing the lyre and singing with lyric inspiration. It is not improbable that the motive of the Apollo in the Vatican, with the long flowing garments (Fig. 222), may be referred to this original. The entire bearing more closely resembles that of the figures of the children of Niobe. We can hardly think without enthusiasm of the Bithynian Achilles group, placed in later times in the Temple of Neptune, near the Circus Flaminius in Rome, which, according to Pliny, would have made the master celebrated even though he had created nothing else during his lifetime. It represented Achilles upon the island of Leuke after his death, and his reception among the deities, and displayed, besides Thetis and Poseidon, numerous fantastic creatures of the sea. Some idea of these last may be gained from a magnificent frieze found in the vicinity of the Temple of Neptune, and now in the Glyptothek at Munich. But it cannot belong to this group, and, in its main features, has no close relations with it.