FIG. 73. DIONYSUS AS GUEST.
The reliefs of the sixth century, and down to about B.C. 460, are excellent examples of the art of their time, in no way inferior to other contemporary works of sculpture. The relief of Pl. II introduces us to a school of artists of whom we have no other knowledge, a school localized in Peloponnesus, and trying to work out an independent line of art. The early reliefs of Athens and the Islands stand, however, on a much higher level. We have already seen that Professor Brunn, an admirable judge, had early discerned in the qualities of the Aristion relief ([Pl. IX]) the promise of the excellence of later Athenian art. The other stele of [Pl. IX], that of Alxenor, shows similar merits, and a somewhat more advanced style. The group of mother and children ([Pl. XIX]) is a work of the greatest delicacy and charm: the forms of mother and infant, showing through the orderly folds of the Ionian dress, indicate genuine love of nature and appreciation of form; and the group is full of the same sentiment which charms us in the tombs of a later age.
The reliefs of the sixth century were usually executed in honour of distinguished persons; they frequently bore the name of the sculptor, and that sculptor would usually be one whose fame was great. This shows that early sculptors were proud of executing tombs: at a later time tombs almost never bear an artist’s name.
As we approach the middle of the fifth century, the art of the sculptor in Greece is taking constantly a higher and a wider range. Great temples are rising on all sides, especially at Athens, and offering to great artists noble opportunities of distinction to be won either by designing the great cultus-statues of the gods, or by fitly adorning the outsides of their temples. The sculpture of athletes also had, in the hands of Pythagoras of Myron and of Polycleitus, reached a perfection hitherto undreamed of. And at the same period the sumptuary laws of Athens, which were only gradually falling into neglect, closely limited the sum of money to be spent on tombs. Under these circumstances we cannot be surprised that the sepulchral monuments of the middle of the fifth century, of the age of the Parthenon and the Temple of Nike, are mostly of somewhat small size and poor execution. In their style they show something of the contemporary grand style, but it is only a distant cousinship to it which they display. They are not the work of great artists, but of workers scarcely above the level of the skilled stonemason.
Several of the groups figured in our plates belong to this age. As examples, we may take Pl. XVII, the stele of Amphotto, which is a work of the earlier half of the fifth century, and Plates X, XIII, XVIII, XX, XXI, XXVI, all of which were probably executed in the latter half of that century. The form of these stelae is simple, even clumsy, the gable above usually surmounted by three acroteria, on which an acanthus pattern was probably painted. The subjects consist of few figures in simple groups. The perspective is by no means perfect; for instance, the breasts of Tynnias ([Pl. X]) and of Mica ([Pl. XXI]) are too fully turned to the spectator. Nevertheless these reliefs have an extraordinary nobility and dignity. Tynnias might almost have sat for a model of the Zeus at Olympia: Lysander ([Pl. XX]) is the model of a modest and well-bred Athenian boy: Mica ([Pl. XXI]), in spite of her fanciful name, has not a touch of levity. Like the maidens of the Parthenon frieze, all these human beings behave as if in the immediate presence of the gods. They embody nobility and repose.
In the fourth century, the conditions of sculpture at Athens again underwent a great change. No new and splendid temples rose from the ground. No great public buildings offered a wide field to the architect, the painter, and the sculptor. Art worked mainly in the service of individuals. And, at the same time, the sepulchral monuments of Athens became far more sumptuous. It is therefore quite natural that they should have been sometimes undertaken by artists of renown.
We have the testimony of Pausanias to the fact that Praxiteles himself sometimes made the sculptural adornment of the great Attic sepulchres. Outside the Peiraeus gate, among other noteworthy tombs, Pausanias[235] found one which he thus describes: ‘Not far from the gates is a tomb, whereon stands a soldier standing by his horse: who he was I know not, but it was Praxiteles who made both man and horse.’ The contemporary painter Nicias also undertook tombs. Pausanias[236] tells us that outside the gates of Triteia in Achaia was ‘a tomb of white marble worthy of note in all respects, but particularly remarkable for the paintings on the marble, the work of Nicias. There is a throne of ivory, and seated on it a young and beauteous woman, behind whom stands a maid-servant holding a sunshade. Also a young man standing, not bearded as yet, clad in a chiton with a purple chlamys over it: beside him is an attendant carrying hunting-spears and leading dogs of hunting breed.
Praxiteles and Nicias were closely associated in art; Praxiteles is even said to have declared that his sculpture owed much of its charm to the colouring applied to it by Nicias. We may judge then that the beautiful sepulchral monuments of the fourth century, whether set up at Athens or elsewhere, owed their excellence to the second Athenian school, to Praxiteles and Scopas and their contemporaries. An examination of the monuments themselves fully confirms this view. More than one archaeologist has been struck with the strong likeness to be traced between the heads recently recovered from the pediments of the temple of Athena at Tegea[237], which are our best evidence for recovering the style of Scopas, and some of the Attic sepulchral reliefs, especially that of Dexileos ([Pl. XII]) and that from the Ilissus ([Pl. XV]). These works are certainly of the age of Scopas. The tomb of Dexileos was set up immediately after 394 B.C., and in the same year the old temple of Athena at Tegea was burned, affording to young Scopas the task of its reconstruction. It is quite possible that some of the existing tombs of the fourth century may be the actual work of sculptors of the second Attic school. In the moderation, the gentleness, the pleasing sentiment of these Athenian tombs we see precisely the qualities for which Praxiteles was celebrated. But, generally speaking, sepulchral monuments are of the class of work which a great sculptor would leave to pupils and assistants, just as they left the decorative sculpture of the bases of their great statues.
The tombs of this age are larger and more sumptuous, and the groups at once more complicated and more expressive. There is less repose than in the stelae of the fifth century, and more sentiment. Characteristic figures of warriors of this age are those of Dexileos ([Pl. XII]) and Aristonautes ([Pl. XI]): and among family groups we may notice the Ilissus relief ([Pl. XV]), the stele of Damasistrate ([Pl. XXIII]), and the group of Pl. XXIV.
Our plates scarcely come down to a later time than the fourth century, but among the most interesting figures found on tombs of the later age is the figure of the girl devoted to the service of Isis in [Fig. 64].