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The group is interesting from many points of view, but mainly from the flood of light which it throws on the methods of Peloponnesian sculpture at the very close of its development. It thus forms a complementary picture to the remains of the monument of Euboulides in Athens. Damophon, like Euboulides, underwent the influence of Pergamon. The colossal scale of his group and the wild hair of his giant Anytos ([Fig. 46]) demonstrate the influence of the altar frieze. Damophon also went back to Pheidias for inspiration. He must have absorbed many lessons from his work at Olympia. The seated group of his goddesses is reminiscent of the two figures next to ‘Theseus’ in the west pediment of the Parthenon. The simple wide-eyed grave expression of his Demeter head goes back to the fifth-century ideal, while his Artemis ([Fig. 47]) wears the melon-coiffure associated with the school of Praxiteles. The attitudes of Artemis and Anytos are Lysippic. Here we have every evidence of academic eclecticism. The same feature is borne out by three coins which reproduce the statues of Damophon. His Asklepios at Aigion gives us a fourth-century type. He copied the Laphria of Patras for Messene. His Herakles in the guise of an Idaean Dactyl at Megalopolis seems to have been a variant of the now fashionable herm figures and to copy a Hermerakles type known by numerous extant examples.
Damophon’s style then was academic and eclectic, borrowing from all sources of inspiration and in general using up over again well-known groups and poses. His execution is even more interesting for its extraordinary inequality. His heads are on the whole very good. The Demeter is a dull piece of work, but both the Anytos and the Artemis show some fancy and some power of original expression. The girl is demure and cheerful, the giant benevolent and rather sly. But when we come to examine the execution of the fragments of the bodies and limbs which survive at Lycosura, we find a very hasty and poor technical ability. The arms and legs are nearly shapeless. They are colossal, but practically formal in design, and details of muscles and sinews are almost entirely omitted. The drapery makes some effort to follow Pheidian designs, but it is poorly carved and without effect. Only in one direction does the artist show any skill, and that is in the great embroidered veil ([Fig. 48]) worn by Despoina. This is an extraordinary tour de force, not for its sculptural effect, which is purely formal, but for the reproduction of a complicated embroidered design in very low relief. A border of tassels with bands of design about it and large embroidered figures of Victory above the bands is rendered with consummate art. We have a frieze of sea-monsters, nymphs, and Erotes according to a common Hellenistic design, a curious local dance of beast figures in human dress, a dance paralleled by some small terra-cotta figures found in the same shrine, and the larger figures of Victory above carrying candelabra.
It is interesting to see the total want of proportion in the artist’s mind, who could devote so much time and originality to a comparatively unimportant piece of decoration, while treating the main lines of his drapery with carelessness and monotony. It is probable that we have here a procedure to be noticed in the Demeter of Cnidos—a head done with great care and placed on a torso of inferior execution. While Damophon worked the heads of all the figures and the drapery of Despoina, he must have left the rest of his group to a band of journeymen assistants. We know from inscriptions that Damophon had two sons, Xenophilos and another whose name is lost. It is, therefore, possible that Xenophilos and Straton, the Argive sculptors, were his sons. Their subjects were similar, and their Asklepios, as shown on a coin, is identical with Damophon’s.
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