Читать книгу Art History For Dummies - Jesse Bryant Wilder - Страница 131

After the fall of Athens in 404 BC, the city-state gradually got on its feet again, though it never rose to its former glory. Nevertheless, Greek philosophy peaked in the fourth century BC. (Maybe Athens’s defeat made all Athenians more philosophical.) Plato taught at his famous Athenian Academy from about 387 BC to 347 BC, and Aristotle, his greatest student, taught at the Lyceum in Athens from 335 BC to 322 BC, after educating Alexander the Great in Pella, Macedonia.

The fourth century BC also produced three great sculptors: Praxiteles, Skopas, and Lysippos (the personal sculptor of Alexander the Great). In fourth-century sculpture, the wet look got even wetter, but the timelessness associated with Phidias and Polykleitos gave way to an everyday or down-to-earth quality — less idealism, more realism. For example, Praxiteles depicts his Knidian Aphrodite preparing to take a bath, while his Hermes (see Figure 7-7) looks fondly on the playful infant Dionysus cradled in his arm.

Fourth-century statues also often have a down-to-earth sensuality lacking in fifth-century sculpture; compare Polykleitos’s Doryphoros in Figure 7-6 to Praxiteles’s Hermes in Figure 7-7.

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FIGURE 7-7: Praxiteles had a knack for giving statues a soft, sensual look, as you can see in this Hellenistic or Roman copy of his Hermes and the Infant Dionysus (circa 320 BC–310 BC).

Hallmarks of Praxiteles’s style include these qualities that illustrate a turn toward realism:

 Depicting natural beauty: The fourth century also produced the first free-standing female nudes. Praxiteles stripped Aphrodite, the goddess of love, to reveal all her delicate beauty and grace. Naked Aphrodite was a hit; lots of copies followed. Praxiteles was an expert at depicting delicate curves and making marble look like soft, supple flesh. The original Knidian Aphrodite, like nearly all great Greek statues, has been lost and is only known through Roman imitations and writers’ descriptions.

 Paying tribute to intrinsic grace: Praxiteles’s statue of Hermes and the Infant Dionysus (refer to Figure 7-7) is nearly as famous as his Aphrodite — and just as beautiful. Notice the softness and classical serenity of the facial features and delicate grace of Hermes’s body. The Hermes, once believed to be an original, is now considered to be a superb copy, closer to the spirit of the original than the copy of Knidian Aphrodite.