These differences are most apparent in the surface modeling and facial expression of the two works. In the Agias the muscles are not over-emphasized in detail, but show the simple observation of nature characteristic of artists who worked before the scientific study of anatomy at the Museum of Alexandria had reacted upon sculpture. In the Apoxyomenos, on the other hand, we see an intentional display of the new learning in the labored and detailed treatment of the muscles, which disclose a knowledge of anatomy unknown before the Hellenistic age. This academic treatment, culminating later in such realistic works as the Laocoön and the Farnese Herakles, can hardly have antedated the beginning of the third century B. C., when anatomy was studied by the physicians Herophilos and Erasistratos, a date after the close of the activity of Lysippos. We see no trace of this influence in the Agias. Moreover, the face of the latter discloses the intense expression, which is elsewhere seen only in works supposed to be by, or influenced by, Skopas, which recalls what Plutarch[2040] said of Lysippos’ portraits of Alexander, that they reproduced his masculine and leonine air (αὐτοῦ τὸ ἀρρενωπὸν καὶ λεοντῶδες); for a comparison of this face with that of the Apoxyomenos, which exhibits the lifelessness and lack of expression so characteristic of many early Hellenistic works, makes it still more evident that we must be on our guard against assuming that both works are representative of the same sculptor. The essential differences in physical type and artistic execution between the two statues have been well summarized by K. T. Frost in a letter published by Prof. Percy Gardner in the latter’s treatment of the same subject.[2041] After a careful analysis of these differences, Frost closes by saying: “It is difficult to believe that the two statues represent works by the same artist; it is not only the type of man, but the way in which that type is expressed which forms the contrast.” He compares the Apoxyomenos with the Borghese Warrior (Fig. [43]) as true products of the Hellenistic age.
When we consider these differences between the two statues, we see that our judgment of Lysippan art must depend on how we interpret them. We may either flatly reject the Apoxyomenos and put the Agias in its place as representing the norm of Lysippan art, or keep the Apoxyomenos and reject the Agias as evidence; or lastly we may keep both as characteristic works of two different periods in the artistic career of Lysippos, explaining the differences as the result of influence or of the lapse of years. A recent writer, to be sure, has cut the Gordian knot by rejecting both statues, and placing the Apoxyomenos of the Uffizi—which we have treated at length in a preceding chapter (Pl. [12])—as the key to our knowledge of the art of Lysippos.[2042] But such a solution of the problem raises even more difficulties. Long before the Agias came to light some critics, indeed, had doubted whether the Apoxyomenos really represented the work of Lysippos, as its Hellenistic character seemed evident. Thus, in 1877, Ulrich Koehler,[2043] following a still earlier judgment,[2044] had come to the conclusion that the Vatican statue was only a free reproduction of Lysippos’ masterpiece and attributed its Hellenistic characteristics to the Roman copyist; but even yet the school which long recognized the Apoxyomenos as the norm of Lysippos has its supporters,[2045] though many archæologists have now supplanted the Apoxyomenos by the Agias.[2046] Others, not willing to renounce the Apoxyomenos as evidence, accept both it and the Agias as characteristic works of the master, appealing to the length of his career to explain the differences, and suggesting that in his youth Lysippos was under the influence of Skopas, but later in life attained independence, and followed a more anatomical rendering for his athlete statues.[2047] However, despite the fact that other artists must have influenced Lysippos,[2048] the Agias can not be shown to be a youthful work of his, nor can the special influence of Skopas be shown to have been that of master on pupil, but rather of one great master on another and equally great contemporary. The difficulty about penetrating the obscurity surrounding Lysippos comes largely from the fact that he borrowed traits from several of his predecessors and contemporaries. The influence of Polykleitos, Skopas, and Praxiteles, and especially of the last two, as Homolle emphasized in his study of the Daochos group,[2049] can be certainly traced in the Agias. Fräulein Bieber, in a recent article,[2050] while denying that Lysippos had anything to do with the Delphian group, tries to prove that one figure in it shows the influence of Praxiteles, another that of Polykleitos, and a third that of Skopas. She believes that the sculptor of the Agias had seen the original bronze statue, the work of Lysippos, which stood in Pharsalos. However, we may leave any such conclusion to one side, and judge between the Agias and the Apoxyomenos solely on the merits of the two statues.
The differences between them appear to us too great to be reconciled on any such principles as those just rehearsed, for their style and technique seem to represent two distinct periods of art. If one is to be rejected, the connection of the Agias with Lysippos certainly rests on better evidence than does the Apoxyomenos. By separating them completely, it is possible both to assign to Lysippos the early date which other evidence points to, and to remove the Apoxyomenos entirely from the fourth century B. C., thus explaining its later modeling, comparatively expressionless features, body-build (which shows the use of three planes, instead of two), and other Hellenistic details. We should, then, see in its original a work not by Lysippos at all, but by some pupil or later member of his school, a work retaining merely traces of the style of the master. In thus eliminating the Apoxyomenos we are justified in following Homolle’s lead in assigning the statue of Agias to Lysippos, in spite of arguments which have been adduced against attributing it to Lysippos and in spite of recent criticism of the inscriptions of the Delphian bases, by which Wolters tries to prove that the inscription on the base of the statue of Agias, and consequently the Agias itself, antedate the inscription and dedication at Pharsalos.[2051] We may, therefore, until further discoveries prove the contrary, consider it as the centre of our treatment of that sculptor. Whether the Apoxyomenos is to be explained as emanating from the immediate environment of Lysippos, or is to be regarded as a work illustrating the last phase of his development, or the innovation of another master—in any case it seems to us clearly to belong to an age essentially different from that which conceived the Agias.[2052]
As the Agias is a statue of a victor in the pankration, we can learn from it how Lysippos represented such an athlete. In giving up the Apoxyomenos, we must also give up statues of athletes which have hitherto been assigned to Lysippos on the basis of their resemblance to it, and the future ascription of statues of this class must be based on stylistic resemblances to the statue of Agias. Thus, for example, we should give up the statue of a youth in Berlin, and the two statues of athletes represented in lunging attitudes in Dresden, which Furtwaengler, on the basis of the Apoxyomenos, believed were copies of originals by Lysippos,[2053] and the Roman male head in Turin, published by A. J. B. Wace,[2054] whose original is somewhat later than that of the Apoxyomenos. On the basis of the Agias, on the other hand, we may regard as Lysippan the statue of an athlete in Copenhagen,[2055] and perhaps the Parian marble statue of an athlete from the Palazzo Farnese now in the British Museum,[2056] with copies in Paris and Rome.[2057] This latter statue Furtwaengler ascribed to the school of Kalamis of the fifth century B. C., on account of the similarity of its style to that of the Apollo-on-the-Omphalos (Fig. 7B) and of its motive to that of the Lansdowne Herakles (Fig. [71] and Pl. [30]); however, A. H. Smith finds it very similar to the Agias, and so rightly refers it to the fourth century B. C.
THE HEAD FROM OLYMPIA.
Impressed by its remarkable likeness to the head of the Agias, I hazarded the opinion some years ago,[2058] that the much discussed Pentelic marble head from Olympia ([Frontispiece] and Figure [69])[2059] was Lysippan,
Fig. 69.—Marble Head, from Olympia. Museum of Olympia. and attempted to bring it into relation with the statue of the Akarnanian pancratiast (whose name I restored as Philandridas), which Pausanias[2060] says was the work of Lysippos. Since then, after a careful revision of the evidence, this earlier opinion has become conviction, and I now have no hesitancy in expressing the belief that in this vigorous marble head we have to do with an original work by Lysippos himself. It will be our task briefly to rehearse the reasons for making such an ascription, despite the serious and weighty objections which might be raised against it.
At first this head was ascribed with surprising unanimity to the school of Praxiteles,[2061] and subsequently, after the discovery of the Tegea heads, with almost equal unanimity to that of Skopas. Treu, who first published the head,[2062] pointed out its near relationship to the Hermes of Praxiteles, which appeared to him to be obvious, notwithstanding the injured condition of the chin, nose, mouth, and brows. He found the general proportions, the shape of the cranium and forehead, and the form of the cheeks and mouth the same in both, while the differences, such as the deeper cut and wider opened eyes with their γοργόν expression, the hair, and the fact that the head is harder, leaner, and bonier than that of the Hermes, were all explained by the different character given to the statue of a victor or Herakles. Many other archæologists, as Boetticher,[2063] Laloux and Monceaux,[2064] and Furtwaengler,[2065] have also seen sure signs of the hand of Praxiteles or his school in the graceful attitude, delicate chiseling, and finish of the work. Still others,[2066] however, found every characteristic of Skopas in this head. Even Treu in his later treatment of the head found it more Skopaic than Praxitelian, and yet, by a careful analysis,[2067] he conclusively showed that the formation of the eyes, the opening of the mouth, and the treatment of the hair were so different in the heads from Tegea (and especially in that of the Herakles, Fig. [73]) as to preclude the possibility of assigning them and the head from Olympia to the same sculptor, and so declared for some independent sculptor among the contemporaries of Skopas. However, he did not see Lysippos in this allied but independent artist, though he admitted the resemblance of the head in question to that of the Agias, as also Homolle,[2068] Mahler,[2069] and other critics have done.