The earlier and later periods of Rhodian art are separated by the quarrel with Rome and consequent loss of the land-empire in 167 B.C. This ended the real independence of Rhodes, and with it disappeared the inventive genius of her artists. She continued for another century to be the great and almost the sole centre of art production, for both Pergamon and Alexandria now lost all artistic importance, but she ceased to develop and originate. The works of her second period are brilliant in the extreme, but they are no longer vital and progressive.
It is significant that the best-known works of this period are great groups rather than single statues. We may notice the Laocoon group, the Farnese Bull, the ‘Pasquino’ of Ajax and Patroclos, the Scylla group, and the group of Odysseus with the Cyclops. Of these the earliest is perhaps the Farnese Bull,[85] which we possess in an Antonine copy at Naples from the Baths of Caracalla. It represents the punishment of Dirce by Zethos and Amphion for her cruelty to their mother Antiope. The two heroes hold the bull, to whose horns they are about to tie the unfortunate Dirce. It was made by Apollonios and Tauriskos of Tralles, and brought from Rhodes to Rome by Asinius Pollio. The date can be fixed by a comparison of inscriptions to about the year 130 B.C. Tauriskos’ son has signed a base at Magnesia about 100 B.C. Both Tauriskos and Apollonios were adopted by Menecrates, son of Menecrates, one of the artists of the Pergamon frieze. But in examining the group we must beware of the Roman additions and restorations, which include nearly all the landscape details together with the figure of Antiope and the mountain god. The head of Zethos is a portrait of Caracalla. The group has been adapted to act as a centre-piece for the great hall of the Baths of Caracalla, and consequently has been made square. Even in its original form, however, it must have been a good example of all-round sculpture. The figures are Lysippic, and the lower part of Dirce, which is the only antique part of her, shows more archaic drapery than usual. This is only what we might expect from an art which has passed its prime. Novelty of treatment is no longer a first essential. Tauriskos also made figures called Hermerotes. These must have been herm figures with an Eros head similar to a statue in the courtyard of the Conservatori Museum, and comparable with the Hermathena, which belonged to Cicero. Herms of all kinds became very popular in Greco-Roman art, and we see here in Rhodes perhaps the first development of the old archaistic Dionysos herms into more modern studies.
Another dramatic group similar to that of the Farnese Bull and the Laocoon was the lost group by Aristonides of Rhodes, showing Athamas in remorse for the murder of his son, Learchos. Pliny tells a foolish tale that the sculptor mixed iron with the copper in order to portray the blush of shame, a story told also about the Jocasta of Silanion.
A little figure of Odysseus ([Fig. 35]) in the Chiaramonti gallery of the Vatican holding out a bowl of wine to the Cyclops must be part of another mythological group of this period. The movement and action of the hero are typically Rhodian, and his face corresponds to the Rhodian type. The rest of the group is lost. The group of Scylla and the sailors of Odysseus is represented only by a much mutilated and fragmentary copy in Oxford, which gives us little information.
We have more copies of the well-known Pasquino group of Menelaos or Ajax and Patroclos. There are fragments in the Vatican, and a well-preserved replica in the Loggia dei Lanzi in Florence ([Fig. 36]). Here again the extraordinary interest in anatomical forms is shown not only in the strain and twist of the living hero—the invariable twist of all these Rhodian figures—but in the admirable contrast between the vivid living body and the relaxed corpse. This contrasting of physical and mental conditions is a part of the dramatic feeling in later Rhodian art, which has quite abandoned its earlier simplicity and has followed on the lines of baroque extravagance laid down by the second Pergamene school.
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Of all the groups the best known and the most instructive is the latest of all, the Laocoon.[86] In this marvellous group we see the full development of the effect of strained agony on the human form, and we see the mature form contrasted both with an active youth’s body and with the semi-inanimate body of the younger boy. When we have removed the restorations and lowered the right arm of Laocoon nearer to his head, we get a perfect group-design unified by the terrible serpent-coils and by the central theme of agony. The torso muscles of Laocoon are fully developed and even exaggerated, though not to the same extent as those of the Pergamene frieze, but the boys’ forms are simpler, and all reflect the basic principles of Rhodian art already enumerated. Pain is shown by the downward sloping eyebrows with sharp interior angles, by the half-closed eyes, wrinkled forehead, and parted lips. The hair is wild, and all the veins of the body stand out sharply. The twist above the waist occurs in all three bodies. It is interesting to notice that even in the Laocoon, the latest work of the most scientific school of Greek sculpture, anatomical accuracy is still lacking. The lower curve of the ribs above the abdomen follows a line impossible in nature, and the left thumb of the elder son is provided with three joints instead of the normal two. Neither the Laocoon nor any one of the other Rhodian groups is perfectly satisfactory to modern taste. There is too much strain, too much agony, too little relief or repose. Every inch of the group is illustrative of pain and passion. Our sense of sympathy is deadened by excessive emphasis and repetition. But in technical skill the group has never been surpassed.