Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art

by Walter Woodburn Hyde

As Dr. Bates points out, there is no recorded statue of Herakles by Skopas which corresponds with this head. The stone one mentioned by Pausanias as standing in the Gymnasion at Sikyon[2133] has been thought by the authors of the Numismatic Commentary on Pausanias to be reproduced on a Sikyonian copper coin of the age of Geta, now in the British Museum.[2134] Many statues and busts scattered in European museums, which represent a beardless Herakles and show Skopaic influence, have been traced back to this original.[2135] However, the coin represents the hero wearing a wreath, and so, if it was copied from the original in the Gymnasion, the latter could not have been the prototype of the head under discussion.

It is now universally acknowledged that all constructive criticism of the art of Skopas must be based on a study of the heads found at Tegea. Besides those discovered in 1879, and now in the National Museum in Athens,[2136] two other male heads (in addition to the torso of a female figure draped as an Amazon, and a head on the same scale which probably belongs to it, as both are of Parian marble, representing probably Atalanta of the East pediment) were discovered by M. Mendel in his excavations of the temple of Athena Alea in 1900–1901, and referred to the pedimental groups described by Pausanias.[2137] As one of these (Fig.73) is characterized by a lion’s scalp worn as a helmet, the hero’s face fitting into the jaws, its teeth showing above his forehead, it has been regarded as the head from a statue of Herakles, although Pausanias mentions no such statue in his enumeration of the figures composing the group of the Eastern pediment, and although it is difficult to explain the presence of the hero in the group of the Western pediment, which represented the battle between his son Telephos and Achilles. Mendel considers this head to be inferior in workmanship to the others, and so refers it to the school of Skopas rather than to the master himself, and designates it “un travail d’atelier.” In describing it, however, he says: “tous ces caractères, qui sont ceux des têtes du Musée central, se retrouvent dans nôtre tête d’Héraclés.”[2138] Here we have a head of a youthful Herakles (or of some hero who has borrowed his attribute of the lion’s skin—perhaps Telephos), which, if not by Skopas himself, is still a work of his school reproducing all his characteristics; consequently, of all these heads from Tegea, it is with this one chiefly that we should compare the head from Sparta similarly covered with a lion’s scalp.

Fig. 73.—So-called Head of Herakles, from Tegea, by Skopas. National Museum, Athens.

Though badly injured, it is still possible to see in this head of the so-called Herakles found at Tegea, both in full view and in profile, the characteristic Skopaic expression of passion, and to discover the means by which the artist effected it. The expression is due in great measure to the upward direction of the gaze, and to the heavy overshadowing of the deep-set eyes. It is further enhanced by the contracted brow, dilated nostril, and half-open, almost panting, mouth, whose parted lips clearly disclose the teeth. The structure of the head is in keeping with the strength of character portrayed; the skull is very deep from front to back, and its framework is massive and bony; the face is broad and short and the chin is heavy; everything emphasizes the impression of a virile and muscular warrior violently engaged in the fray. The subjects of the two pedimental groups—the Kalydonian boar hunt and the battle between Achilles and Telephos—justified the expression of unrestrained violence which we see in this and the other male heads, and gave the sculptor an opportunity to represent his heroes in the excitement of action and danger. To effect this intensity of expression Skopas relied mainly on the treatment of the eye. In one of the heads (the unhelmeted one in Athens) the gaze is not turned upwards as in the Herakles, nor are the neck-muscles strained as in the others, and yet the expression is even more violent than in them. Thus it is the modeling of the flesh about the eye which is the real distinguishing feature of Skopas’ work. In describing the helmeted head in Athens, E. A. Gardner says:

“The eyes are set very deep in their sockets, and heavily overshadowed, at their inner corners, by the strong projection of the brow, which does not, however, as in some later examples of a similar intention on the part of the artist, meet the line of the nose at an acute angle, but arches away from it in a bold curve. At the outer corners the eyes are also heavily overshadowed, here by a projecting mass of flesh or muscle which overhangs and actually hides in part the upper lid. The eyes are very wide-open—with a dilation which comes from fixing the eyes upon a distant object—and therefore suggest the far-away look associated with a passionate nature.”[2139]

COMPARISON OF THE TEGEA HEADS AND THE HEAD FROM SPARTA.

It is to the facial characteristics in the Tegea heads that Dr. Bates calls attention in basing his argument for the Skopaic origin of the head from Sparta: the forehead horizontally divided by a median line, the swelling, prominent brow, the deep-set eyes with their narrow lids—only 2 mm. wide—embedded in the projecting flesh at the outer corners, and the parted mouth. He also sees a resemblance in the small round curls bunched together above the ears. But if there are resemblances (especially in the modeling of the eyes) there are also great differences observable in the Tegea heads and the one from Sparta. Let us confine our comparison of the latter with the Herakles of the Tegea pediment, though the comparison with any of the other male heads would lead to substantially the same results.

In the first place the structure of the two heads in question is very different. As the head from Sparta is broken in two at the ears and the whole back part is missing, we can not tell whether it had the great depth of the one from Tegea. But of the massive, bony framework of the latter there is little trace in the former. In the Tegea example we are struck with the squareness of the head and the breadth of the central part of the face; the sides do not gradually converge toward the middle, but seem to form distinct planes. The distance between the eyes is also in keeping with the breadth of the skull as measured between the ears; the breadth of the face almost equals its length from the top of the forehead to the chin, and this fact, together with the massive, prominent chin, gives an element of squareness to the whole.[2140] On the other hand, the head from Sparta has a long, narrow face whose sides softly converge toward the middle in beautiful curves about the cheeks; its cheek-bones are not so high nor so prominent as those of the other; it ends in a delicate, almost effeminate chin, which slightly retreats and gives the whole lower part of the face an oval structure, thus recalling Praxiteles and fourth-century Attic works. The length of the face is accentuated by the considerable height to which the head rises above the forehead, in contrast with the flatness of the skull in the example from Tegea. The eyes are not so wide-open; they are longer and not so swollen nor compressed toward the centre; if we view the two heads from the side, we see that the eye-socket in the Tegea head is larger and appreciably deeper than in the one from Sparta.