Of Daidalos it is reported that he was the first who improved upon these symbolic carvings. He made winking gods and walking images by means of mechanical contrivances. He is said to have been a contemporary of Theseus; both belong therefore to the mythical period. Though a statue of Herakles, holding in his right arm a club, whilst his left extended bears a lion’s skin as a shield, is attributed to him; and though Homer mentions Daidalos, of Krete, as having wrought a dance in metal for Ariadne, which formed the model for that wrought by Hephaistos on the shield of Achilles; the fact that the very word to ‘embellish’ is taken from his name, points less to a distinct person than to the period in which Greek art began to free itself from Asiatic bondage.
The historical periods into which we may group Greek sculpture correspond to those of their architecture.
First period, from the 8th century B.C. to the Persian wars, 470 B.C.
Second period, from Kimon to the end of the Peloponnesian war, 470 B.C.-400 B.C.
Third period, from the delivery of Athens to the conquest of Greece by the Romans, 400 B.C.-146 B.C. This third period comprises Greek sculpture in its decline.
Struggle into existence, growth and development, acme and decline, follow in rapid succession. Wood-carvers and potters begin; then we have a transition to bronze-works under Glaukos, who was the first to solder the separate parts of the statues, which prior to him had been always beaten into union. Following up this improvement, the artists of Samos succeeded in making a clay-model, and then in covering it with the fluid metal. As if by a supernatural charm the bright metal statue grew out of the gloomy clay, and formed an everlasting monument to adorn temples, squares, and streets. Rhœkos and Theodorus of Samos, with Smilis, built the Labyrinth at Lemnos, which they adorned with 150 columns, which were turned out by an ingenious mechanism, an improvement on the art of casting in bronze. Pliny describes a bronze figure by Theodorus, which held in its right hand a file, and in its left a quadriga with a charioteer, which was so small that the car, with the four horses and the driver, could be covered by the wing of a fly. The celebrated ring of Polykrates, admirably wrought gold and silver sacrificial vessels, and a vine with golden leaves and grapes of precious stones, were also attributed to this artist. At Chios, the birth-place of Glaukos, the family of Mêlas worked for the first time in Parian marble; whilst Byzes of Naxos cut marble into thin slabs for architectural purposes, giving a more exquisite finish to the houses of the gods. On every side a marked improvement took place. The head-dress of Apollo was still that of the Egyptian sphinx. The faces of the statues were placid, mask-like, as if modelled separately and then fixed on; the eyes looked as if first cut out, and then placed into their sockets; but the anatomy of the body was treated with greater care and a more refined feeling. The legs were close together and the arms hung down perpendicularly, with a prescribed stiffness, but there were details in the treatment of the stone surface, which promised well for the future of Greek art, and the promise was most faithfully kept.
The struggling art freed itself from the fetters of stern canons. Custom, struck by the lightning of genius, had to vanish, and life, truth, and beauty as essential elements ruled the Greek mind. To blend the isolated perfections of the two sexes into one became the aim of Greek art. Women were sculptured with the colder lines of manly firmness, and men received gentler forms through a less angular treatment. The artists conscientiously purified their works from all passions and second thoughts, expressing nothing that could divert the mind from the simple admiration of idealised nature. At this period they only succeeded in animating the limbs of their statues: action was expressed with great power in strained muscles and swelling veins. The faces were still without life, and without a comprehension of those emotions which vibrate electrically in the countenances of excited humanity. They could not yet petrify the thinking soul, but they undoubtedly already succeeded in sculpturing the animated body to perfection.
The second period was ushered in by the versatile and productive talents of Onatas, Ageladas, Kalamis, Iphikrates, Pythagoras of Regium, and Myron. Greece had attained her independence, the Persian hordes of despotism were vanquished, and Athens enjoyed her hegemony. Freedom and national exultation produced Sokrates, Plato, and Anaxagoras in philosophy; Kimon, Perikles, and Themistokles in politics; Æschylus, Sophokles, and Euripides in dramatic poetry; and Pheidias, Praxiteles, and Skopas in sculpture. If we add to this fourfold triad Herodotus, Thukydides, and Xenophon, we have given an array of names each of which singly would have filled the world with its fame, and become a landmark in the progressive development of humanity. Athens was at this period the most brilliant centre of intellectual and artistic life. Men were inspired by the general animation; they began to modify old thoughts, to transform eîdola, and to give birth to numberless productions which in beauty and striving for truth surpassed anything attempted before. Schools of arts vied with the schools of wrestlers, poets, and thinkers, and all excited the dramatists to their grand conceptions, which again reacted on plastic art. Under these influences the imaginary theogony yielded to a more scientific inquiry into the origin of all things, which led to the recognition of the first incomprehensible, immutable, eternal cause, no longer based on mere belief, but on the immovable rock of scientific conviction. No wonder that art was also inspired by this spiritual movement. The conceptions of the priests and philosophers were to be loudly proclaimed in visible forms, and the sculptor, from a deep feeling of veneration for the Supreme Artist of the Universe, became the expounder of the divinity, and the exclusive high priest of beauty and truth. Instead of singing Vedantic hymns or Egyptian psalms and litanies to the glory of God, the Greek sculptors hewed the gods in majestic forms, and every touch of their chisels on the lifeless marble, every blow of their hammers, became an eternally resounding prayer in honour of God.
Wood, metal, clay, precious stones, and marble had by degrees yielded to the creative power of the Greek masters; and matter could no longer resist in any way their ruling intellectual force. At this moment, under these circumstances, Pheidias, the son of Charmides of Athens, the pupil of Hegias and Ageladas, stepped forward, and was raised by the superiority of his genius to the dignity of king of Greek plastic art. The Zeus of Olympia and the Athene of the Parthenon qualified Pheidias as the sculptor of the concrete form of the divinity; for if the father of the gods had had a visible form, and his wisdom and intellect had been incarnate in Athene, both must have looked as they were sculptured by Pheidias. In symbolic emblems he poetically expressed the powers of the two divinities; and used the mineral, the vegetable, and animal kingdoms to glorify their power.
Nothing is left us of these two master-pieces but the glowing descriptions of those who saw and admired them. That which a combination of thousands of our artists, with all our technical advancement, can scarcely accomplish; the drawing of thousands and thousands of intellectual human beings together to admire their works of art; was done by Pheidias. Men flocked from all parts of the world to see and admire his statues, and to offer fervent thanks to the Father of all for having endowed one of his creatures with the power to give a correct form to Homer’s lines: