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supports, such as tree-trunks, pillars, and urns, have to be introduced into marble statues in the round. Thus it became inevitable to make the figure lean frankly upon his support, and thus we get those graceful reclining attitudes which are often cast in the teeth of Praxiteles as symptomatic of decadence.
Pheidias and Praxiteles are as pre-eminent among the names of ancient sculptors as are Polygnotus, Zeuxis, and Apelles among the painters. Of the two, Praxiteles was the most praised, and his works had the highest value in the Roman market. This being so, it is remarkable how little we know of his personality—practically nothing except that he was an Athenian, and was the son or brother of another famous sculptor called Cephisodotus. Plausible stories are told of his relations with Phryne, who is said to have been his model for the Cnidian Aphrodite. She is said further to have cajoled him into giving her the Eros dedicated at Thespiæ, by first making him promise her the best of all his statues, and then discovering which he thought the best by raising a false report of fire at his studio. His period of activity seems to have extended from about 370 to 330 B.C.
His three masterpieces were the Cnidian Aphrodite, the young Satyr, and the Eros of Thespiæ, but we have a long list of his other works. Of the first, Pliny tells us that it was the finest statue not only of Praxiteles, but of the whole world, and that many had made the voyage to Cnidos expressly to see it. He adds a story that Praxiteles had made two figures of Venus and offered them to the people of Cos at the same price. One was draped, the other nude, and the Coans preferred the former, “thinking it austere and modest.” We must remember that naked goddesses were novelties. The other was purchased by Cnidos, and there were bitter regrets at Cos when they found how much more celebrated was the naked Aphrodite. King Nicomedes of Bithynia subsequently offered to liquidate the entire national debt of Cnidos, “which was immense,” if they would only sell him the statue, but one is glad to learn that the little island preferred to keep both its debts and its goddess. Apparently it was in her capacity as a marine goddess, a “Notre Dame de Bon Secours” (Euploia), that these islanders chose Aphrodite, the foam-born, for their patroness.
Coins of Cnidos indicate the pose of the statue with sufficient clearness for us to identify a Venus in the Vatican as a copy of the Cnidian Aphrodite.[79] Papal decency has seen fit to encase her legs, beginning just below the hips, with drapery constructed of tin. This would, if anything could, impair the aspect of perfect modesty which shows in every line of her pose and expression. She is not aware of human spectators; there is no self-conscious prudery, as in the abominable Medici Venus, which was an attempt by a later and baser generation to imitate the same type. She has left her robe to hang over the tall water-jar, and is stepping from or towards the bath, not without shrinking, and not in ignorance of her beauty. Even in this imperfect copy we recognise the qualities which made Lucian admire the statue—“the design of the scalp and forehead, the finely pencilled eyebrows, and the look of the eyes, so tender, yet so bright and joyful.” He adds elsewhere that “a proud smile plays over her lips.” A lovely girl’s head in Parian marble, now in the Glyptothek at Munich, appears to me so clearly to resemble a younger sister of the same goddess that it must bear some relation to an original by Praxiteles.[80]
The Capitoline Gallery also possesses a copy of the “Young Satyr” of Praxiteles, “called by the Greeks περιβοητός”—that is, world-famed.[81] Readers of Hawthorne will remember his eloquent description of the “Marble Faun,” and though we, better supplied with ancient originals, can recognise that this is only after (and not very near) Praxiteles, yet even as it stands the statue has a peculiar charm and fascination. The sculptor has conveyed the impression of a young creature of the woods, only half human, shy and wild as an animal, and as
Plate LXX. SCULPTURED COLUMN FROM THE TEMPLE OF ARTEMIS AT EPHESUS