The Farnese Bull, a work in which we possess the most colossal group of antiquity, was executed by Apollonius and Tauriscus, of Tralles. To the same school belongs the Dying Gladiator, who unquestionably represents, as usually supposed, a combatant who died in the amphitheatre. It is remarkable for the entire absence of ideal representation, and for its complete individuality and close imitation of nature. This statue is probably one of the masterpieces of the celebrated Pyromachus, who executed several groups, and large compositions of battle scenes for Attalus, King of Pergamus, to celebrate his decisive victory over the Gauls (B.C. 240).
To the later Athenian school belong probably the Belvidere Torso, so much admired by Michael Angelo, the Farnese Hercules, the Venus de'Medici, and the Fighting Gladiator. The Belvidere Torso is now considered to be a copy by Apollonius, the son of Nestor, of the Hercules of Lysippus, and probably executed in the Macedonian period. The Farnese Hercules is so exaggerated in its style as to have been deemed a work as late as the Roman empire. According to Flaxman, the Venus de'Medici is a deteriorated variety or repetition of a Venus of Praxiteles. It is now generally admitted that it is a work of the latest Macedonian period, probably by Cleomenes, whose name appears on its base. The Fighting Gladiator bears the name of Agasias of Ephesus. From the attitude of the figure it is clear that the statue represents not a gladiator, but a warrior contending with a mounted combatant, probably an Athenian, warding off a blow from a centaur.
DYING GLADIATOR.[ToList]
The Macedonian age, to which most of these statues belonged, commenced with Alexander the Great, and terminated with the absorption of Greek art by the Romans.
Art having, in the two previous periods, reached its culminating point of perfection, as is the law of all development, when a culminating point is reached, a downward tendency and a period of decline begins, for the cycle of development must be completed and the stages of rise, progress, maturity, decline and decay run through.
No exact date, however, can be assigned to the beginning of the stage of decline; no sharp line of demarcation can be pointed out dividing one stage from the other. The decline was so gradual that there was an inevitable blending of the two. We perceive evident signs of decline in the fourth stage, while, in the fifth, or stage of decline, we sometimes meet some noble works of art partaking of the perfect style of the earlier periods. A period of decline inevitably and invariably follows an age of maturity and perfection. As Mr. Lecky observes, "The sculptor and the painter of the age of Praxiteles precipitated art into sensuality; both of them destroyed its religious character, both of them raised it to high æsthetic perfection, but in both cases that perfection was followed by a speedy decline." Muller remarks, "The creative activity, the real central point of the entire activity of art, which fashions peculiar forms for peculiar ideas, must have flagged in its exertions when the natural circle of ideas among the Greeks had received complete plastic embodiment, or it must have been morbidly driven to abnormal inventions. We find, therefore, that art, during this period, with greater or less degrees of skill in execution, delighted now in fantastical, now in effeminate productions, calculated merely to charm the senses. And even in the better and nobler works of the time there was still on the whole something—not, indeed, very striking to the eye, but which could be felt by the natural sense, something which distinguished them from the earlier works—the striving after effect." The spirit of imitation marked the later portion of this period of decline. The sculptors of this age, despairing of equaling the productions of the former age, gave themselves up completely to servile imitation. The imitation was naturally inferior to the original, and each succeeding attempt at imitation was but a step lower in degradation of the art. When they ceased to study nature they thought to repair the deterioration of the beauty of form by the finish of the parts, and in a still later period they gave, instead of a grandeur of style, an exaggeration of form. Lastly, being utterly unable to cope with their predecessors in the sculpture of statues, they had recourse to the manufacture of busts and portraits, which they executed in countless numbers. The art reached its lowest ebb, and thus the cycle of the development of Greek sculpture terminated in its last stage—utter decay and degradation.
Roman.—In the very early periods the Romans imitated the Etruscans, for, generally speaking, all the works of the first periods of Rome were executed by Etruscan artists. Their earliest statues of gods were in clay. Etruscan art exercised the greatest influence in Rome, for Rome was adorned with monuments of Etruscan art, in its very infancy; it was a Tuscan called Veturius Mamurius who made the shields (ancilia) of the temple of Numa, and who made, in bronze, the statue of Vertumna, a Tuscan deity, in the suburb of Rome. The Romans owed all their culture to the Etruscans, from whom they learned the arts of architecture, terra-cotta work, and painting; calling in artists of that more tasteful race when anything of that sort was required for the decoration of their simple edifices. The most ancient monuments of Rome thus corresponded with the contemporaneous style of Etruscan art; there is thus a similarity in the figures; the attributes alone can lead one to distinguish them, as these attributes tell if the statue was connected with the creed or modes of belief of Etruria or Rome. There was not, therefore, any Roman style, properly so called; the only distinction to be remarked is that the statues of the early periods, executed by the Romans, are characterized, like the Romans themselves of the same period, by a beard and long hair. At a late period all the architecture, all the sculpture of the public edifices at Rome, were in the Tuscan style, according to the testimony of Pliny.
After the second Punic war, Greek artists took the place of Etruscan artists at Rome; the taking of Syracuse gave the Romans a knowledge of the beautiful works of Greece, and the treasures of art brought from Corinth chiefly contributed to awaken a taste among them, and they soon turned into ridicule their ancient statues in clay; Greek art was gradually transferred to Rome; Greek artists began to abound there, and the history of Roman art was thenceforward confounded with that of the vicissitudes of Greek art. The style of the works of sculpture under the first Emperors may be considered as a continuation and sequel of the development of Greek sculpture. These works, more particularly the portrait statues, which were the prevailing works of this period, exhibit a great deal of force and character, though a want of care is visible in some parts, especially in the hair. The characters of the heads always bear out the descriptions which historians have given of the person they belong to, the Roman head differing essentially from the Greek, in having a more arched forehead, a nose more aquiline, and features altogether of a more decided character. It may be observed, however, as a general remark, that the Roman statues are of a thicker and more robust form, with less ease and grace, more stern, and of a less ideal expression than Greek statues, though equally made by Greek artists. Under Augustus, and the following Roman Emperors, to meet the demand for Greek statues to embellish their houses and villas, several copies and imitations of celebrated Greek works were manufactured by the sculptors of the age. The Apollo Belvidere, the Venus of the Capitol, and several copies of celebrated Greek works, in various Museums, such as the Faun, Cupid, Apollo Sauroctonos, and Venus of Praxiteles, the Discobolos of Myron, and several works of Scopas and Lysippus, are supposed to be of this age. Archæologists are now generally agreed in thinking that the Apollo Belvidere is only a copy of a Roman period of a very fine Greek statue of about the beginning of the third century B.C., and that the original was in bronze. Another copy has been identified in a bronze statuette now in St. Petersburg, known as the Stroganoff Apollo. From this statuette it is found that the Apollo Belvidere held forward in his left hand, not a bow as was thought, but the ægis, in the attitude of spreading consternation among an enemy. The production of this statue is generally assigned to the period after the invasion of the Gauls, whom, in 278 B.C., the god drove in alarm from his sanctuary, at Delphi. (A cut of Apollo Belvidere is seen on page 495.)