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We know that Philiskos of Rhodes was the author of a group of Muses which was much admired in Rome. It has been suggested that the new type of female drapery which appears on an altar from Halicarnassos and on the relief of the Apotheosis of Homer by Archelaos of Priene, certainly a member of the Rhodian school, was his work.[80] This new type of drapery is to be seen also in a number of statues of Muses, of which we have a collection from Miletos in the museum of Constantinople.[81] It may be described most simply as an aggravation and exaggeration of the style of drapery introduced by the school of Praxiteles. The desire to get a series of folds at sharply contrasting angles leads to a very artificial arrangement of the dress, which produces an inharmonious effect. But there is a new development which deserves our attention. Transparent drapery had been elaborated by Alkamenes and the pupils of Pheidias, but always with the intention of displaying the body beneath it. The new drapery of the Muses is transparent with the desire to display other drapery beneath it. The earlier Greeks had used a thick mantle over a transparent chiton, but the Rhodian author of the new drapery used a transparent mantle over a clinging chiton. He thus doubles the subtlety of his technique, and provides himself with a series of new and intricate problems, just as the athletic sculptor does with his anatomical discoveries.
This transparent mantle immediately obtained an immense vogue, and it comes down into Roman art as a strong rival of the late Praxitelean drapery, which, however, still prevails by the side of the other. The greater number of Roman female draped statues use one or the other type of garments. The Milesian Muses are not in themselves great works of art. The real technical possibilities of the new drapery are better displayed by a wonderful figure from Magnesia in Constantinople ([Fig. 31]), in which the new fashion is rendered with consummate skill. It is of considerable importance that we should date this change in drapery as accurately as possible. The date hitherto proposed for its supposed author Philiskos has been put about 220 B.C. The Apotheosis of Homer is taken to be about 210 judging from a portrait of Ptolemy IV appearing in it, and the Halicarnassos base is put about the same time. But the portrait is by no means certainly that of Ptolemy IV. It is more like Ptolemy II, and might belong to any period. Philiskos himself has nothing to do with it. A female figure by him with a signed base has been discovered in Thasos ([Fig. 33]). The drapery of this female figure follows the type of the Mantinean basis,[82] and the earlier Muses group of the Vatican. The inscription is not earlier than the first century B.C. Philiskos, then, was a late artist who used the Praxitelean drapery. As for the transparent drapery, it is highly improbable that it was invented before the frieze of the great altar at Pergamon. We know that Rhodian artists worked on this altar, and Rhodian style is visible in some of the figures, but transparent drapery of the Rhodian type appears nowhere on the frieze. There seems to be no reason to date any figure wearing this drapery earlier than 190 B.C., and we should therefore attribute it to the second century. We have seen in the Antioch of Eutychides the Praxitelean type taken over by the earlier Rhodian artists in the third century. Have we any link by which we can connect the transparent mantle with the earlier form?
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The answer to this question is provided by one of the greatest statues of antiquity, the Victory of Samothrace ([Fig. 34]). The date and school of this masterpiece are still warmly disputed, and the current view tends to connect it with the victory of Demetrios Poliorcetes in 306, by which he won the command of the sea. Coins of Demetrios show a trumpet-blowing Victory on the prow of a ship in an attitude closely resembling the Louvre statue. But the statue has no connexion with the coin, for a detailed study of the neck and fragments of the right shoulder reveals the impossibility of the trumpet-blowing attitude. The right hand and arm are raised high and backwards probably with a victor’s wreath. Moreover, the coin has a low girdle and no cloak, the statue the high third-century girdle and a great flapping mantle. The type is not so rare as might be expected. We have it in small bronzes, and we have it also in situ on a votive statue in Rhodes. The Victory of Samothrace is a later version of the statue possibly erected by Demetrios. Its Rhodian origin depends partly on the extraordinary finesse and delicate naturalism of its drapery, a study never popular in Pergamon, and partly on the strong probability, not yet decisively proved, that the marble of its base is Rhodian. The latter point may provide definite proof, but the former is the one on which we must at present rely. The Rhodian origin or at least the Lysippic connexions of the statue are further supported by the twist above the waist so universal among the followers of that artist and the strong vital momentary pose, which is wrongly rendered in the present attitude of the statue. It is not a standing figure, but a Victory who is just alighting after flight, and it should therefore be tilted farther forward. The only statue now existing which presents a real parallel to the intricate folds of the Victory’s drapery is the Magnesian statue already mentioned,[83] which belongs to the new Rhodian drapery school. But the mantle of the Victory is older in type. Thus the Victory’s drapery stands midway between the Antioch figure and the new Rhodian fashion. It shows just that scientific naturalism which we have noticed in the anatomy of the athletic figures, and just that tendency to miss the perfect whole by an over-anxious care for detail. The date for such work is 250 and not 300 B.C. The Chiaramonti Niobid[84] is a work of similar tendency though of a different school, and must fall about the same date.
We now possess some evidence for the continuous study and development of female drapery at Rhodes parallel to the study and development of the male form. The Rhodian school is in fact the most industrious and the most scientific of all the Hellenistic art centres. In mastery of detail they are unapproachable, but they have ceased to care much for motive or idealism in their subjects. To such art both impressionism and romantic feeling are foreign. Rhodian art is very versatile and very straightforward, but its constant aspiration after the unusual renders it in the end monotonous.