Читать книгу Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art - Walter Woodburn Hyde - Страница 39

The Argive school was devoted mainly to athletic statuary. The greatest name in old Argive art is that of Ageladas or Hagelaïdas,866 the reputed teacher of Myron and Polykleitos, who lived from the third quarter of the sixth century into the second quarter of the fifth century B.C. While his connection with Myron and Polykleitos is scarcely to be doubted,867 his supposed connection with Pheidias has made the chronology of the life of this sculptor one of the difficult problems of the ancient history of art. A scholion on Aristophanes’ Ranae, 504, dates the statue known as the Herakles Alexikakos in the Attic deme Melite by Hagelaïdas after the pestilence in Athens of 431–430 B.C., and makes the Argive sculptor (Gelados = Hagelaïdas) the teacher of Pheidias. As his statue of the Olympic victor Anochos commemorated a victory won in Ol. 65 ( = 520 B.C.), this late date is manifestly impossible.868 Furthermore, a better tradition says that Hegias was the teacher of the Attic master.869 Furtwaengler’s attempt to show that these two divergent traditions were really in accord, by the assumption that Hegias was the pupil of Hagelaïdas and that his art came from the latter—thus explaining certain similarities in the work of Hagelaïdas and Pheidias,—does not solve the problem.870 As the scholion is based on a good tradition,871 the best solution of the difficulty is that of Kalkmann872 and others, that the Alexikakos was the work of a younger Hagelaïdas, the grandson of the famous master, by the intermediate Argeiadas. For a lower limit to the activity of Hagelaïdas there seems to be no good reason for distrusting the evidence that he made a bronze Zeus for the Messenians to be set up at Naupaktos, whither they moved in 455 B.C.873 This makes quite possible a period of collaboration of four or five years at least between Polykleitos and Hagelaïdas.

Pausanias mentions the monuments of three victors at Olympia by Hagelaïdas: the statues of the pancratiast Timasitheos of Delphi, who won two victories some time between Ols. (?) 65 and 67 (520 and 512 B.C.);874 of the runner Anochos of Tarentum, who won in the stade- and double-race in Ols. 65 and (?) 66 ( = 520 and 516 B.C.);875 and the chariot-group of Kleosthenes of Epidamnos, who won in Ol. 66 ( = 516 B.C.).876

None of the works of Hagelaïdas at Olympia or elsewhere is known. Messenian coins of the fourth century B.C. show the motives of two of his statues, that of his Zeus Ithomatas just mentioned as being made for the Messenians,877 and the beardless Zeus παῖς at Aigion.878 However, we infer the characteristics of his style from the bronze statuette in Berlin which was found at Ligourió near Epidauros (Fig. 16).879 This is undoubtedly an Argive work contemporary with the later period of Hagelaïdas. Furtwaengler and Frost are right in looking upon it as showing the prototype of the canon of Polykleitos. Though too small to count as a characteristic work of the early Argive school, it shows us that the style of that school was a short and stocky type, similar to Aeginetan works, only somewhat fleshier and heavier. The straight mouth and heavy chin, the treatment of the eyelids, and the clumsy limbs are all archaic features to be expected in the period preceding Polykleitos. The modeling is carefully executed, showing a knowledge of anatomy. If such excellence is found in a statuette, we can form some idea of the perfection of a statue by the master.

Fig. 16.—Bronze Statuette, from Ligourió. Museum of Berlin.

The bronze Apollo from Pompeii now in the Naples Museum,880 with marble replicas in Mantua and Paris,881 shows us how Hagelaïdas treated a god type, while the statue of an athlete by Stephanos will give us some idea of how he treated his victor statues, as it seems to have been modeled after an athlete statue of the early fifth century B.C., perhaps after a work by some pupil of the master. Stephanos belonged to the school of Pasiteles, a group of sculptors flourishing at Rome at the end of the Republic and the beginning of the Empire. They devoted themselves to the reproduction of early fifth-century statues. They were not ordinary copyists, for their works show individual mannerisms and a system of proportions foreign to the originals. Thus their statues have the square shoulders of the Argive school, but the slim bodies and slender legs of the period of Lysippos and his scholars. Apart from such mannerisms, then, in the male figure signed Stephanos, pupil of Pasiteles, in the Villa Albani in Rome (Pl. 9),882 which reappears in a very similar statue in groups combined with a female figure of related style,883 or with another male figure,884 we may see a copy of a bronze original of the Argive school before Polykleitos. The standing motive and the body forms are the same in both the Mantuan Apollo and the Stephanos figure, although the former is more developed and the head type is different in both; this shows that the two, while displaying the same basic ideal, were not works of the same master.885 As the statue by Stephanos has a fillet around the hair, it may well represent an ideal athlete, who in the original held an aryballos or similar palæstra attribute in the raised left hand. It is interesting to compare the copies of this group with those of another representing mother and son, the work of Menelaos, the pupil of Stephanos, which, though transferred from Greek to Roman taste in respect of drapery and forms, is merely a variation of the same theme without any heroic traits.886

PLATE 9

Statue of an Athlete, by Stephanos. Villa Albani, Rome.

The influence of Hagelaïdas can be easily traced in other schools of art, especially in the Attic School and in the sculptures of the temple of Zeus at Olympia, whether these latter be Peloponnesian in origin or not. It will be convenient in this connection to discuss briefly the style of these important sculptures, which we have already mentioned several times. The statement of Pausanias,887 that the sculptors of the East and West Gables were Paionios of Mende in Thrace and Alkamenes respectively—the latter being known as the pupil of Pheidias888—was not doubted until the discovery of the Olympia sculptures.889 Then doubts arose both on chronological and stylistic grounds, and now only a few archæologists would maintain that either artist had anything to do with these groups. The style of the two gables (as well as that of the metopes) is so similar that many have assigned them to one and the same artist.890 They have been referred to many schools from Ionia to Sicily, even including a local Elean one. Thus Brunn assigned them to a North Greek-Thracian school; Flasch891 and (more recently) Joubin892 to the Attic; Kekulé893 and Friedrichs-Wolters894 to a West Greek (Sicilian) one, because of their similarity to the metopes of temple E at Selinos; Furtwaengler895 to an Ionic one (Parian masters). Most scholars, however, including K. Lange,896 Treu,897 Studniczka,898 Collignon,899 and Overbeck,900 have referred them to Peloponnesian sculptors.901

To return to the art of Hagelaïdas: if we assume that the Ligourió bronze comes from the school of that Argive master certain conclusions must be drawn. The figure is archaic, but does not have the archaic smile. In Athens at the end of the archaic period there was a reaction against this smile, and doubtless the Athenian artists were strongly influenced by Argive models. Thus an archaic bronze head of a youth, found on the Akropolis and dating from about 480 B.C., shows a serious mouth, a strong chin, heavy upper eyelids, and finely worked hair, characteristics which we found in the Ligourió statuette. These traits show that the statuette and the head were the forerunners of the Apollo of the West Gable at Olympia. So finished a bronze as this one from the Akropolis, at the beginning of the fifth century B.C., has inclined Richardson to look upon it as “not improbably a work of Hagelaïdas,”902 though here again Furtwaengler would ascribe it to Hegias.903 The Parian marble statue of an ephebe found on the Akropolis (Fig. 17)904—one of the most beautiful recovered during the excavations Fig. 17.—Statue of an Ephebe, from the Akropolis. Akropolis Museum, Athens. there—shows the same Argive influence. This statue is chronologically the first masterpiece, thus far recovered, which marks the break with archaism by having its head turned slightly to one side.905 It has the same pose as the Athlete by Stephanos and probably represents a palæstra victor. The head, with its heavy chin, and the muscular body strikingly resemble the Harmodios (Fig. 32), which has led Furtwaengler and others to ascribe it to Kritios or his school.906 At the same time a similarity is seen between this head and that of the Apollo of the West Gable at Olympia, and so with Bulle and others we ascribe it to the Argive school.

One of the female statues (Korai) found on the Akropolis, and approximately of the same date as the ephebe, viz, the fragmentary one consisting of head and bust and known popularly as la petite boudeuse, shows the same revolt against Ionism.907 In many respects this statue is very different from most of the other Akropolis Korai. The eyes are not yet set back naturally, but the appearance of depth is attained by thickening the eyelids, quite in contrast with the modeling of the eyeball in most of the other statues. The corners of the mouth turn down, which gives it the appearance of pouting. This statue is also our first example in sculpture of the so-called Greek profile—the nose continuing the line of the forehead. The same Argive influence in Athenian art is also discernible in the Parian marble head of an athlete with traces of yellow in the hair (Fig. 18),908 which may be dated a little later than the Akropolis ephebe—about 470 B.C. Because of its resemblance to the Fig. 18.—Head of an Ephebe, from the Akropolis. Akropolis Museum, Athens. Apollo of Olympia, its Attic-Peloponnesian origin seems clear.909 Its expression is comparable with that of the Kore just discussed—as it has the same mouth, eyes, and nose, both monuments showing the reaction against the archaic smile, which characterized the Ionian period of Attic art. This same Ionic reaction also may be seen in the bronze statuette of a diskobolos in the Metropolitan Museum (Fig. 46),910 which resembles in style that of the Tyrannicides, but shows also Argive traits. These Argive traits, small head and slender limbs, are easily seen by comparing this statuette with the Ligourió bronze.

We have already mentioned the monumental group of the hoplite victor Damaretos and of the pentathlete Theopompos, which was made about 500 B.C. by the Argive sculptors Chrysothemis and Eutelidas.911 These artists were known to later antiquity only by the epigram inscribed on the base of this monument at Olympia, and the probable dates of the two victories of Theopompos, Ols. (?) 69 and 70 ( = 504 and 500 B.C.), show that they were contemporaries of Hagelaïdas, and not, as formerly was believed, the forerunners of his school.912

Polykleitos, a Sikyonian by birth,913 migrated early to Argos to become the pupil of Hagelaïdas, and became the great master of the Argive school in the next generation after him. We have four statues by him at Olympia. His earliest work probably was the statue of the boxer Kyniskos of Mantinea, who won in Ol. (?) 80 ( = 460 B.C.); he made the statues of the Elean pentathlete Pythokles and of the Epidamnian boxer Aristion, both of whom won their victories in Ol. 82 ( = 452 B.C.); and lastly he made the statue of the boy boxer Thersilochos from Kerkyra, who won in Ol. (?) 87 ( = 432 B.C.)914 The footprints on the three recovered bases of the statues of the first three show that all were represented at rest. Of Patrokles, the brother of Polykleitos, Pausanias mentions no statues at Olympia, though Pliny says that he made athlete statues.915 Of Naukydes,916 the nephew or brother of Polykleitos, we have record of three athlete statues at Olympia: those of the wrestlers Cheimon of Argos, who won in Ol. 83 ( = 448 B.C.), and Baukis of Trœzen, who won some time between Ols. (?) 85 and 90 ( = 440 and 420 B.C.); also one of the boxer Eukles of Rhodes, who won some time between Ols. 90 and 93 ( = 420 and 408 B.C.).917 A contemporary of Naukydes was the sculptor Phradmon, who, according to Pliny, was a contemporary of Polykleitos;918 he made the statue of the boy wrestler Amertas of Elis, who won a victory some time between Ols. 84 and 90 ( = 444 and 420 B.C.).919 In the next century, Polykleitos Minor, the grandson or grandnephew of the great Polykleitos, and the pupil of Naukydes,920 had three statues at Olympia: those of the boy boxer Antipatros of Miletos, whose victory is given by Africanus as Ol. 98 ( = 388 B.C.); of the two boy wrestlers Agenor of Thebes, who won some time between Ols. 93 and 103 ( = 408 and 368 B.C.), and Xenokles of Mainalos, who won some time between Ols. 94 and 100 ( = 404 and 380 B.C.).921 The inscribed base of the latter has been recovered and the footprints show that the statue was represented at rest, the body resting equally on both feet, the left slightly advanced. Andreas, a second-century B.C. Argive sculptor, made a statue at Olympia of the boy wrestler Lysippos of Elis, who won some time between Ols. 149 and 157 ( = 184 and 152 B.C.).922