Читать книгу A History of Sculpture - Ernest Henry Short - Страница 16

If Scopas may be regarded as the first Greek to realise that marble and bronze could express the more passionate intensity of feeling which naturally followed the increasing importance of the individual and the individual’s thoughts and emotions, his successor, Praxiteles, must be associated with the second great characteristic of fourth-century sculpture—its lyrical appeal. Greek sculpture had been epic. It had concerned itself with the heroic myths of the race. But as art became every year less a matter of communal concern, it began to voice the growing self-assertion of the individual Greek. In other words, sculpture became lyric.

Almost any fourth-century work would illustrate what we mean, but a beautiful practical example is furnished from the history of Attic sepulchral sculpture.

Any visitor to Athens will remember the numerous dedicatory reliefs, chapels and memorial stelæ still to be seen in situ in the Ceramicus, the cemetery near the Dipylon Gate. Reconstructing the scene at the time of Praxiteles, we must imagine the roads leading from the principal city gates as flanked with such sculptured memorials of the dead. The Sacred Way to Eleusis, for instance, became a favourite site.

To-day the Ceramicus is in ruins, but its monuments still present some of the finest examples of original Hellenic sculpture extant. There is the famous “Relief of Dexileus.” It depicts with magnificent vigour an Athenian cavalry-man, triumphing over a prostrate foe. Dexileus died in the war which Athens waged unsuccessfully with the Corinthians, so the monument dates from about 394 b.c., the time when the youthful Scopas was at work upon the pedimental groups at Tegea. The beautiful work often called the “Death of Socrates” is only a few years earlier in date. The connection with Socrates is, of course, apocryphal, the subject really being an Athenian pouring a libation. At the other side is the wife, absorbed as was the wont of Athenian wives in some domestic interest—her dress, or her jewellery. The third figure is a young slave holding the vessel filled with wine.

“THE DEXILEUS RELIEF”

Ceramicus, Athens

Neither of the works memorialises any great political or social figure. Nothing could well be more individualistic than a monument erected to an unknown man by his friends or relations. Dating from about 400 b.c., both belong to an age when sculpture was divorcing itself from its close alliance with the State. But the point to be realised is that a few years earlier such works would have been impossible. Sculptors of such power would not have been at the service of mere individuals, however wealthy. Cicero (“De Legibus,” ii. 26) tells that in the period after Solon’s death, the Athenians legislated against elaborate monuments in such cemeteries as the Ceramicus. No tomb was permitted unless it could be made by ten men in three days.

For many years public opinion approved of these sumptuary laws. It was only when the fifth century was well advanced that they fell into disuse. Even then the transition was gradual. The sepulchral monuments were small and stonemasons only were employed. In the fourth century, however, the best known sculptors accepted such commissions. Pausanias, describing the antiquities near the Piræus Gate, says, for instance: “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.”

But the tendency towards an increased interest in the needs of the individual citizen is even more strongly exemplified by the growth of home life. Home life had been sacrificed to public life in the age of Themistocles and Pericles. The victors of Salamis lived in small houses, which were particularly dark and uncomfortable owing to the lack of glass. The poorer citizens lived in a single “cella.” Families of moderate means had two sets of rooms, the upper floor for the women, and the lower set apart for the men. In the fifth century only a few rich men could afford the series of rooms grouped round the two courts which enabled the wealthy Athenian to receive his friends and enjoy some of the privileges of home life. Under the circumstances, we cannot wonder that the Greek left his home early and preferred the gymnasium or the market-place, the law courts or the covered corridors. A few met in the courtyards of their friends but, as a whole, social life in Athens was public.

In the fourth century, however, the richer members of the community began to build magnificent houses in the suburbs of Athens. Attempts at decorating the interiors followed as a matter of course. It is said that Alcibiades was the first Athenian to try, calling in Agatharchus, the painter, to his aid. The poorness of the light in the majority of the houses doomed the painters’ efforts to failure, but the sculptor had a better chance. His work could be used, at any rate, for the decoration of the courtyards. He was employed to supply portrait busts and a host of single figures, which, appealing as they did to the individual taste alone, would have had no place in the art of the preceding century.

The range of subjects was still further increased by the popular sculptor being no longer chiefly engaged upon huge chryselephantine statues of deities, in which it was manifestly impossible to depart far from the popular types which had been fixed by sculptors like Phidias and Polyclitus. Moreover, the sculptor was no longer compelled to spend most of his time in filling a triangular pediment, a square metope, or shaping his design to the long narrow frieze. The consequence was the discovery of numbers of mythical subjects capable of objective realisation in bronze and marble.

The “Hermes” is a beautiful example of the use such a sculptor as Praxiteles made of the new opportunities. The place it occupies in the history of the art is unique. Whereas most sculptures of its class are Roman copies, the “Hermes of Praxiteles” is an undoubted original. The marble was found at Olympia in 1877 a.d., on the very spot where Pausanias recorded having seen it. The find was preceded by the identification of a dipteral temple with an Heraion (Temple of Hera) also described by Pausanias. But this was of small interest compared with the statue which the German excavators discovered embedded in a fragment of wall. There was never any doubt as to its identity. It was clearly “the Hermes of stone, carrying the infant Dionysus—a work moreover by Praxiteles”—as Pausanias had recorded.

Every one has seen a cast of the statue. The god is carrying the babe Dionysus to the nymphs. He has stopped for a moment’s rest and is amusing his little charge, may be with a bunch of grapes held in the right hand. The perfect grace of the figure and the pose are essentially Praxitelean. The work illustrates the softer and more sensuous manner of imaging the lesser divinities which arose in the fourth century. In this case the youthful god in the flush of early manhood must be contrasted with the “bearded” Hermes of the age of Phidias. After the time of Praxiteles there was no reversion to the earlier type. He did for Hermes and Apollo what Phidias and Polyclitus had done for Zeus and Hera.

The influence of Praxiteles can be traced in a hundred kindred works produced during the next few centuries. In particular, it led to a fuller appreciation of the value of marble as a medium. Previously most of these single male statues had been bronze. The use of marble in turn led to increased technical skill. Take Praxiteles’ treatment of the hair in the “Hermes,” for instance. Note the massing of the locks, without an attempt at the realistic representation of the details, and the skilful use of the play of light and shade which such free treatment makes possible.