Excursions in Art and Letters

by William Wetmore Story

But perhaps the most distinguished of all was Kalamis, who, though probably a little younger than Phidias, was certainly a contemporary. Among other works, he executed in bronze an Apollo Alexicacos; a chariot in honor of Hiero’s Victory at Olympia; a marble Apollo in the Servilian Gardens in Rome; another bronze Apollo thirty cubits high, which Lucullus carried to Rome from Apollonia; a beardless Asclepius in gold and ivory; a Nike; Zeus Ammon; Dionysos; Aphrodite; Alcmena; and the famous Sosandra, so praised by Lucian. But what in this connection is peculiarly to be noticed is, that, besides being renowned for his statues of gods and mortals, he was celebrated for his skill in the representation of animals; and the excellence of his horses is specially spoken of by Ovid, Cicero, Pausanias, Propertius, and Pliny. It would therefore, in this view, seem much more probable that he may have designed the Panathenaic frieze than that it was designed by Phidias, who, as far as we know, had no particular talent for horses or animals. There is no indication, however, that either of them had anything to do with it.

It is useless to proceed further in this direction. Here were men, specially marble workers, who were amply able to execute all the marble figures of the Parthenon, without recourse to Phidias; and as there is no indication that he ever anywhere executed similar works for any temple, while at least Alcamenes and Pæonios are known to have made the works corresponding to these in the Temple of Zeus, there would seem to be far more reason to attribute these figures to them than to Phidias, who, at the time when they were made, was too much occupied with his other work to have been able to execute them himself.

In the absence, then, of all clear indications as to the artist who made the marble sculptures of the Parthenon, it would seem more probable that they were executed by various hands, and in like manner as those of the Erechtheum, built in the 93d Olympiad, about twenty-eight years after the building of the Parthenon. Fortunately, from the discovery of certain fragments on which the accounts of the building of the Erechtheum were inscribed at the time, we are enabled to say how these reliefs were made. Portions were set off to different artists, each of whom executed his part, as described in these fragments. The names of the artists were Agathenor, Iasos, Phyromachos, Praxias, and Loclos. The inscription begins thus—I give only a fragment of it—Τὸν παῖδα τὸν τὸ δόρυ ἔχοντα [Δ Δ. Φυρόμαχος Κηφισιεὺς τὸν νεανίσκον τὸν παρὰ τὸν θώρακα ΓΔ. Πραχσίας ἐμ Μελίτῃ οἱκῶν τὸν ἵππον καὶ τὸν ὀπισθοφανῆ τὸν παρακρούοντα ΗΔΔ]; and so on. The sign ΓΔ occurs four times in the inscription. Three times the work is by Phyromachos, and belongs apparently to the same group.[5]

Here we have names of artists who are unknown to us, unless the Phyromachos named here is the same who, according to Pliny, made Alcibiades in a chariot with four horses. And as for Praxias, he cannot be the well-known Praxias, since he in all probability died before the 92d Olympiad. If, then, these sculptures were intrusted to artists whose very names have not come down to us, is it not probable that the decorative sculptures of the Parthenon would have been confided to artists of the same class? In such case it would seem most natural that no mention would be made of them, more than of the artists who worked on the Erechtheum, since they were persons of no peculiar note and fame; while in the Temple of Zeus, inasmuch as artists of distinction worked, their names are given. Why tell us that Alcamenes and Pæonios made the groups in the tympana at Olympia, and omit to say anything about similar works in the Parthenon, if they were executed by Phidias or any other artist of great distinction?

Here, too, we see that different portions of the same work were assigned to different artists, each working out his subjects separately, though all working in agreement, to develop a certain story or series of stories. Such a practice would account for all sorts of varieties of design and execution, and would explain the differences to be observed between the various portions of the sculptures of the Parthenon.

A careful examination of the frieze alone shows that it must have been executed by various artists, so distinct are the different parts as well in execution as in design.

The notion commonly entertained, that Phidias was considered in his age to be vastly superior to all contemporary sculptors, will scarcely bear examination. He undoubtedly surpassed them all in his colossal chryselephantine statues of divinities; though even in this branch of art there was a difference of opinion, and one other artist at least, Polyclitus, was held, in his statue of Hera, to have stood abreast of him. Strabo declares that it excelled in beauty all the works of Phidias. But in other branches of the art the superiority of Phidias was not admitted; and he was, if report be true, repeatedly adjudged a second place in his competitions with his rivals. Alcamenes, Polyclitus, Kalamis, and Ctesilaus were his superiors in their marble statues and representations of mortals, and we hear of no work of his in marble to compete with theirs. Lucian, for instance, in his Dialogue on Statues, praises equally the Venus of Praxiteles, the Sosandra of Kalamis, the Aphrodite of the Gardens by Alcamenes, and the Athena Lemnia and Amazon of Phidias; and out of the special beauties of each he reconstructs an ideal image of the most beautiful woman. From the Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles he takes the head, having no need of the rest of the body (he says), as the figure is not to be nude; and from this head he selects the outlines of the hair, or rather the outline of the forehead where it joins the hair, the forehead, the delicately penciled eyebrows, and the liquid and radiant charm of the eyes. From the Aphrodite of Alcamenes he takes the cheeks and the lower part of the face, and especially the base of the hands, the beautifully proportioned wrists, and the flexile taper fingers. From Phidias he takes the total contour of the face, the softness of the jaw, and the symmetrical nose of the Athena, and the lips and the neck of the Amazon. From the Sosandra of Kalamis he takes her modest grace and her delicate subtle smile, her chastely arranged dress and her easy bearing. Her age and stature, he says, shall be that of the Cnidian Aphrodite, for this is most beautiful in Praxiteles. For her other qualities he draws upon the painters. This opinion of Lucian is particularly interesting and valuable, from the fact that he had studied and practiced the art of sculpture under his uncle, who was a sculptor, and his judgment is therefore of far more value than that of an ordinary connoisseur.

Pliny also relates a story which has a bearing in this connection, of a competition between various celebrated artists, who were contemporaries at this period. The subject was an Amazon. The artists themselves were to be the judges; and it was agreed that the statue should be held to be best which each artist ranked second to his own. The result was that the first prize was adjudged to Polyclitus, the second to Phidias, the third to Ctesilaus, the fourth to Cydon, and the fifth to Phradmon. We may reject the story as a fact, but its very existence proves that the fame of Phidias, great as it was, did not so entirely eclipse that of other artists of his time as we generally suppose. Who of us now would think that Phradmon and Cydon, for example, stood on a level to contend with him, with any chance of other than a disastrous defeat? But it is plain that the ancients did not think so, or this story would not have been invented.

We now come to the question whether Phidias ever worked at all in marble. His renown undoubtedly rested upon his magnificent statues in ivory and gold, and especially upon his Zeus and Athena of the Parthenon, which towered above all his other works. So wonderful was the Zeus, that it was said to have strengthened religion in Greece; and the Athena of the Parthenon was held to be the glory of Athens. The poets and writers celebrate Phidias always as specially the creator of these great chryselephantine works; and though they praise the beauty of his bronze works, and especially of the Athena Lemnia, it is plain that these held a secondary place in public estimation, or at all events did not stand alone and apart as the others did. Thus Propertius says, characterizing the sculptors:—

“Phidiacus signo se Juppiter ornat eburno;
Praxitelem propria vindicat arte Lapis;
Gloria Lysippi est animosa effingere signa;
Exactis Calamis se mihi jactat equis.”