On the other hand, the schools of Pergamon, Alexandria, and Rhodes show no falling off in technical skill as long as they remain independent of Rome. Even their idealism does not wholly decline, for the Gallic victories of Attalos and Eumenes brought about an idealist revival in Pergamene art associated with the decoration of the great altar. Rhodes remained ever wedded to the athletic ideal. Alexandria delighted most in scenes of genre and realistic imitations of nature. But all turned out work of marvellous quality, and it is mainly a vagary of fashion in criticism that now induces so many authorities to label as decadent wonderful masterpieces of sculpture like the Victory of Samothrace, the kneeling boy of Subiaco, or the Silenos with the young Dionysos. Works so full of human nature and so rich in sympathy may well claim to replace by their romantic appeal the classical feeling of the fifth century. It is only when romance becomes sentimentality that it meets with just condemnation.
The outstanding feature of the history of Greek sculpture during the Hellenistic period is the transference of its vital centres from the mainland to the new kingdoms of the Diadochi on the east and south and to the great new free state of Rhodes. The chief cause was an economic one. Alexander’s campaigns brought about a revival of prosperity and wealth in the Greek world, but among his friends and not among his enemies. Athens was always his enemy and the enemy of his Macedonian successors. Consequently during the whole period from the death of Alexander to the Roman conquest Athens was either under Macedonian rule or in danger of Macedonian attack. It was Macedonian policy to keep her weak and isolated, and her trading supremacy began to be transferred to the island of Delos. The great days of Attic art passed with the death of Praxiteles and the coming of Alexander. In the Peloponnese the pupils of Lysippos carried on into the third century the traditions of the Sikyonian school, but we can see from such knowledge as we possess of their activities that the wealth and fame of the new kingdoms were already calling the artists to abandon the impoverished towns of the mainland. The Peloponnese also opposed Alexander and his successors, and Macedonian garrisons held the chief fortresses of the country. We find Eutychides of Sikyon working for Antioch, and Chares working at Lindos in Rhodes. After the date given for the pupils of Lysippos in 296 B.C., Pliny makes the following significant statement: ‘cessavit deinde ars, ac rursus Olympiade CLVI (156 B.C.) revixit.’[1] For 150 years the history of artistic development must be studied on the eastern side of the Aegean.
After the preliminary conflicts between the successors of Alexander for the partition of the empire a number of new states arose, which are known to us usually as the kingdoms of the Diadochi or Successors. Of these the three most important were Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, under the rule of Antigonids, Seleucids, and Ptolemies respectively. Of smaller importance, but quite independent and self-sustaining, were Bithynia, Pergamon, and the island republic of Rhodes, the latter being the only one which maintained its Hellenic democratic institutions. The attitude of these states towards art differs remarkably. Macedonia remained always a military monarchy in a condition of almost constant frontier war, and was wholly uninterested in artistic developments. Syria seems from the first to have fallen under Semitic and oriental influences, which destroyed its appreciation of the purer forms of Greek art. Bithynia, Pontos, and Cappadocia were barbarian rather than Greek. As a result, we find that the old artistic traditions are maintained prominently in three only of the new states: Pergamon, the home of the very Hellenic race of the Attalids; Rhodes, whose pure Hellenic descent was untouched; and Alexandria, which became practically a Greek town in the midst of an older Egyptian civilization.
The kingdom of Pergamon included the area of the old Ionian cities, and inherited, therefore, an artistic tradition as old as its own existence. It is no matter for surprise that its art-loving monarchs should have founded a great library and a great school of sculpture in open rivalry with the richer resources of Ptolemaic Alexandria. The art of Pergamon is well known to us from the magnificent groups and figures of the Gallic dedications of Attalos I after his victories about 240 B.C., and from the marvellous frieze of the altar excavated in situ by the Germans, which belongs to the period of Eumenes II and the early second century. But before we come to these later developments of Pergamene art, it is important that we should discover the earliest tendencies and predilections of the Pergamene court in the first half of the third century. We are told[2] that the most remarkable work of Kephisodotos, the son of Praxiteles, was his ‘symplegma’ at Pergamon—probably an erotic group—which was noteworthy for its extraordinarily naturalistic rendering of the pressure of the fingers into the flesh. Such erotic groups of nymphs and satyrs or hermaphrodites exist in our museums, and are ultimately derived from this type of statue. Actual discoveries at Pergamon support this conception of early third-century Pergamene art. The well-known Hermaphrodite in Constantinople ([Fig. 1]) and a beautiful girl’s head in Berlin[3] show the extreme delicacy in the rendering of flesh and the fondness for a sensual body treatment which we might expect from an Ionian version of the schools of Scopas and Praxiteles. The existence of such a school in Ionia in the late fourth century is highly probable. The Pergamene school of the early third century would seem to be the later natural development of the creators of the Ephesos columns and the Niobids. Scopaic expression and Praxitelean flesh treatment are the hall-marks of the school. Another work of importance for the early Pergamene period is the Crouching Aphrodite type, so popular in Roman times. Of this statue Pliny tells us: ‘Venerem lavantem se Daedalus fecit.’[4] This Daedalus was a Bithynian artist of the early third century, who must have fallen under the general influence of the prevalent Pergamene school. His Aphrodite[5] shows exactly the artistic tendencies of the early Pergamene school. The motive is unimportant and frivolous—a genre motive of a girl washing herself—but it is used for the purpose of demonstrating the technical skill of the artist in displaying the nude female form. The artist does not use all his skill in the effort to produce a noble or even a romantic ideal. The subject is immaterial, provided it affords a chance of showing his technical skill. The crouching attitude is a new one in art, and one well adapted for exhibiting the human body in all its variety. It appears again in the Attalid dedications, and was evidently a favourite at Pergamon. Another example is in the well-known Knife-Grinder of the Uffizi,[6] part of a great group of Marsyas, Apollo, and the Scythian slave, which we can certainly connect with this period of Pergamene art. The Knife-Grinder himself is a copy and not an original. That is made clear by his late plinth, in spite of his magnificent workmanship. But the finer copies of the hanging Marsyas, which belongs to the group, are in a Phrygian marble, betraying their Pergamene origin. These copies of the Marsyas are divided into two types: a so-called ‘red’ type ([Fig. 2]), made of the Phrygian marble, in which the expression of agony is more marked, and a white type[7] in which the face is less distorted. A theory has been put forward that the white type represents an early third-century prototype, while the red type is a Pergamene variation of rather later date.[8] We may, however, hesitate to see sufficient difference in the two types to make so wide a distinction. The white type may be merely a less masterly adaptation of the red. An Apollo torso[9] in Berlin from Pergamon with the right hand resting on the head agrees with a marble disc in Dresden[10] showing a similar figure confronted by the hanging Marsyas. We may therefore associate this figure as the third member of the group with Marsyas and the Knife-Grinder.[11] The Apollo is a seated figure of distinctly Praxitelean influence. The keen expression of the Knife-Grinder and the agonized face of the Marsyas may equally well be attributed to Scopaic teaching. We have a good example of this mixed tradition in early Pergamene art. Technically we are at once compelled to notice the immense advance in realism and anatomical study. The hanging Marsyas shows a correct appreciation of the effects of such a posture on swollen veins and strained abdomen. The corner of the mouth is drawn up in agony; the forehead is corrugated with rows of wrinkles; the hair, even on the chest, is matted with perspiration. One would say that so remarkable a statue could only be studied from nature, and one recalls the stories of Parrhasios, who is said to have used an actual model for his Prometheus Bound.[12] We are long past the time when sculptors worked from memory. Even Praxiteles was said to have made his Cnidian goddess with Phryne as a model. In the Knife-Grinder we may perhaps detect some of the earliest traces of that exaggeration of the muscles which will so soon affect athletic art.
One of the most important of the Pergamon finds was the little bronze satyr,[13] which has enabled us to associate with Pergamon a whole host of satyr types of more or less similar style. The Dancing Satyr of Pompeii ([Fig. 3]) and Athens, the Satyr of the Uffizi clashing cymbals,[14] with its replica in Dresden, and the Satyr turning round to examine his tail[15] are all variants of the new artistic cult of the satyr, a cult which seems to have had a Pergamene origin.[16] The satyr gave to the Pergamene artist just that opportunity for the display of wild and somewhat sensual enthusiasm which he wanted, for new and original poses, and for combination with his nymphs and bacchanals. In Phrygia especially orgiastic manifestations of religion were the regular practice, and dancing was both wild and universal. The new artistic conceptions show the clear influence of this spirit on the more restrained art of the fourth-century schools. The Dancing Maenad of Berlin,[17] the Aphrodite Kallipygos of Naples,[18] and the famous Sleeping Hermaphrodite[19] are further examples of the marvellous flesh treatment and the wild frenzy of movement which we learn to associate with third-century Pergamene art.
Apart from the general spirit of Pergamene work there are several definite technical peculiarities which enable us to postulate a Pergamene origin for many unclassed works of the Hellenistic age. These can be gathered from the definitely Pergamene Gallic statues, which we have yet to discuss, and from the satyr types already mentioned. One is the hair tossed up off the forehead and falling in lank matted locks of wild disordered type. The eyebrows are usually straight and shaggy, with a heavy bulge of the frontal sinus over the nose. The cheekbones are prominent, and the lips thick and parted. In the body the most marked feature is the desire to get away from the old-fashioned straight plane for the front of the torso. The lower part of the chest usually projects strongly, while the waist is drawn in, so that the profile of the torso is shaped like a very obtuse z. In the female body there is a general affection for rather heavy forms with a good envelope of flesh. The artist’s skill is here devoted mainly to the delineation of surface. The heads of such female figures as we can attribute to Pergamene art show very little expression. The hair is done on the Praxitelean model, but the locks tend to become more rope-like and twisted as time goes on. We cannot point to any great peculiarities in the Pergamene treatment of women. Neither Lysippos nor Scopas seems to have had much effect on the feminine types of Greek sculpture. The whole Hellenistic age is in servitude to Praxitelean ideals of women whether in Alexandria, Rhodes, or Pergamon. The differences are only in the details of execution, the Pergamenes tending always towards clear cutting of hair and features, while the Alexandrines preferred an impressionist smoothing away of all sharp edges.
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