Читать книгу Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art - Walter Woodburn Hyde - Страница 46

Various familiar motives from the everyday life of the gymnasium and palæstra were reproduced in the statues of athletes. One of the commonest methods was to represent the victor anointing his body with oil. The use of oil was indispensable in all athletic exercises, in order to make the body and limbs more supple, and especially in wrestling and the pankration, to make it difficult for one’s antagonist to get a grip.1027 Pliny mentions a painting by Theoros, representing a man se inunguentem,1028 which appears to have been a votive portrait of an athlete. The motive was common in vase-paintings and statuary. Several red-figured vases of the severe style, antedating the statues to be considered, show from realistic representations of palæstra scenes that it was customary for athletes to hold a round aryballos high in the right hand and pour oil from it into the left, which was placed across the body horizontally.1029 The same motive appears with variations in statues.1030 Thus the statue of an ephebe in Petworth House, Sussex, England,1031 a statue, as Furtwaengler says, to be praised more for its excellent preservation than for its workmanship, represents an athlete, who holds a globular aryballos in his right hand raised over the shoulder, while the left arm is held across the abdomen. On the nearby tree-trunk are small cylindrical objects which seem to be boxing pads. This statue, and especially its head, have been regarded by Michaelis and Furtwaengler as unmistakably Polykleitan in style.1032 Several other copies of original statues representing athletes pouring oil have been wrongly classed as replicas of one original,1033 though they merely have essential features alike, due chiefly to the subject. First is the famous statue in the Glyptothek known as the Oelgiesser (Oil-pourer), a Roman copy of an Attic bronze of about the middle of the fifth century B.C. (Pl. 11).1034 Though the right arm and left hand are lost, it is clear that the athlete held in his raised right hand an oil flask, as in the Petworth statue.1035 Notwithstanding that the head resembles the Praxitelian Hermes,1036 this does not show that the statue is of fourth-century origin, for its original is older; it merely shows that the art of Praxiteles was deeply rooted in that of his fifth-century Fig. 23.—Head of so-called Oil-pourer. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. predecessors. Because of its Attic affiliations, Klein tried to identify it with the Ἐγκρινόμενος of Alkamenes mentioned by Pliny,1037 by amending that title to Ἐγχριόμενος, the “Anointer.” Brunn, however, rightly saw the analogy of the body forms to Myron’s Marsyas,1038 and Furtwaengler and Bulle have ascribed it to Lykios, the son and pupil of that master, who worked about 440 B.C., the approximate date of the original of the statue. A fragmentary head in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts (Fig. 23),1039 formerly in private possession in England, is a copy of the same original as the Munich statue. Its special interest is that it is not an exact copy of the original, as the Munich statue is, but a freer one, showing a fuller mouth, fleshier cheeks, and deeper-set eyes. While the Munich statue is the dry work of a Roman copyist of Augustus’ time, this head is by a far abler Greek copyist of the second century B.C. A torso in the Albertinum in Dresden, without a head,1040 is similar to the Munich statue, but hardly a replica. It probably goes back to an original by an Attic master of the end of the fifth or beginning of the fourth century B.C. Other under life-size statues related to this torso show the same motive.1041 A black-marble statue found at Porto d’Anzio in 1758, and now in the Glyptothek,1042 has the Polykleitan standing motive. The left arm, which is stretched out, holds an oil flask in the hand, while the right arm is lowered. The band, which the position of the fingers shows that the right hand probably held, indicates it is the statue of a victor. A bronze statuette from South Italy, now in the British Museum,1043 represents a nude youth holding an alabastron in his right hand, while the left has the palm open to receive the oil. The hair fashion (κρωβύλος) seems to point to an Attic sculptor of about 470 B.C.1044 The same motive is found on terra-cotta statuettes from Myrina,1045 on reliefs,1046 and on gems.1047

PLATE 11

Statue of the so-called Oil-pourer. Glyptothek, Munich.