Books: A History Of Greek Art
F >>
F. B. Tarbell >> A History Of Greek Art
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
12
From this point on no attempt will be made to preserve a
chronological order, but the principal classes of sculpture
belonging to the Hellenistic period will be illustrated, each by
two or three examples. Religious sculpture may be put first. Here
the chief place belongs to the Aphrodite of Melos, called the
Venus of Milo (Fig. 173). This statue was found by accident in
1820 on the island of Melos (Milo) near the site of the ancient
city. According to the best evidence available, it was lying in
the neighborhood of its original pedestal, in a niche of some
building. Near it were found a piece of an upper left arm and a
left hand holding an apple; of these two fragments the former
certainly and perhaps the latter belong to the statue. The prize
was bought by M. de Riviere, French ambassador at Constantinople,
and presented by him to the French king, Louis XVIII. The same
vessel which conveyed it to France brought some other marble
fragments from Melos, including a piece of an inscribed statue-
base with an artist's inscription, in characters of the second
century B.C. or later. A drawing exists of this fragment, but the
object itself has disappeared, and in spite of much acute
argumentation it remains uncertain whether it did or did not form
a part of the basis of the Aphrodite.
Still greater uncertainty prevails as to the proper restoration of
the statue, and no one of the many suggestions that have been made
is free from difficulties. It seems probable, as has recently been
set forth with great force and clearness by Professor Furtwangler,
[Footnote: "Masterpieces of Greek Sculpture," pages 384 ff.] that
the figure is an adaptation from an Aphrodite of the fourth
century, who rests her left foot upon a helmet and, holding a
shield on her left thigh, looks at her own reflection. On this
view the difficulty of explaining the attitude of the Aphrodite of
Melos arises from the fact that the motive was created for an
entirely different purpose and is not altogether appropriate to
the present one, whatever precisely that may be.
It has seemed necessary, in the case of a statue of so much
importance, to touch upon these learned perplexities; but let them
not greatly trouble the reader or turn him aside from enjoying the
superb qualities of the work. One of the Aphrodites of Scopas or
Praxiteles, if we had it in the original, would perhaps reveal to
us a still diviner beauty. As it is, this is the worthiest
existing embodiment of the goddess of Love. The ideal is chaste
and noble, echoing the sentiment of the fourth century at its
best; and the execution is worthy of a work which is in some sense
a Greek original.
The Apollo of the Belvedere (Fig. 174), on the other hand, is only
a copy of a bronze original. The principal restorations are the
left hand and the right fore-arm and hand. The most natural
explanation of the god's attitude is that he held a bow in his
left hand and has just let fly an arrow against some foe. His
figure is slender, according to the fashion which prevailed from
the middle of the fourth century onward, and he moves over the
ground with marvelous lightness. His appearance has an effect of
almost dandified elegance, and critics to-day cannot feel the
reverent raptures which this statue used to evoke. Yet still the
Apollo of the Belvedere remains a radiant apparition. An attempt
has recently been made to promote the figure, or rather its
original, to the middle of the fourth century.
As a specimen of the portrait-sculpture of the Hellenistic period
I have selected the seated statue of Posidippus (Fig. 175), an
Athenian dramatist of the so-called New Comedy, who flourished in
the early part of the third century. The preservation of the
statue is extraordinary; there is nothing modern about it except
the thumb of the left hand. It produces strongly the impression of
being an original work and also of being a speaking likeness. It
may have been modeled in the actual presence of the subject, but
in that case the name on the front of the plinth was doubtless
inscribed later, when the figure was removed from its pedestal and
taken to Rome. Posidippus is clean-shaven, according to the
fashion that came in about the time of Alexander. There is a
companion statue of equal merit, which commonly goes by the name
of Menander. The two men are strongly contrasted with one another
by the sculptor in features, expression, and bodily carriage. Both
statues show, as do many others of the period, how mistaken it
would be to form our idea of the actual appearance of the Greeks
from the purely ideal creations of Greek sculpture.
Besides real portraits, imaginary portraits of great excellence
were produced in the Hellenistic period. Fig. 176 is a good
specimen of these. Only the head is antique, and there are some
restorations, including the nose. This is one of a considerable
number of heads which reproduce an ideal portrait of Homer,
conceived as a blind old man. The marks of age and blindness are
rendered with great fidelity. There is a variant type of this head
which is much more suggestive of poetical inspiration.
Portraiture, of course, did not confine itself to men of
refinement and intellect. As an extreme example of what was
possible in the opposite direction nothing could be better than
the original bronze statue shown in Fig. 177. It was found in Rome
in 1885, and is essentially complete, except for the missing
eyeballs; the seat is new. The statue represents a naked boxer of
herculean frame, his hands armed with the aestus or boxing-gloves
made of leather. The man is evidently a professional "bruiser" of
the lowest type. He is just resting after an encounter, and no
detail is spared to bring out the nature of his occupation.
Swollen ears were the conventional mark of the boxer at all
periods, but here the effect is still further enhanced by
scratches and drops of blood. Moreover, the nose and cheeks bear
evidence of having been badly "punished," and the moustache is
clotted with blood. From top to toe the statue exhibits the
highest grade of technical skill. One would like very much to know
what was the original purpose of the work. It may have been a
votive statue, dedicated by a victorious boxer at Olympia or
elsewhere. A bronze head of similar brutality found at Olympia
bears witness that the refined statues of athletes produced in
the best period of Greek art and set up in that precinct were
forced at a later day to accept such low companionship. Or it may
be that this boxer is not an actual person at all, and that the
statue belongs to the domain of genre. In either case it testifies
to the coarse taste of the age.
By genre sculpture is meant sculpture which deals with incidents
or situations illustrative of every-day life. The conditions of
the great age, although they permitted a genre-like treatment in
votive sculptures and in grave-reliefs (cf. Fig. 134), offered few
or no occasions for works of pure genre, whose sole purpose is to
gratify the spectator. In the Hellenistic period, however, such
works became plentiful. Fig. 178 gives a good specimen. A boy of
four or five is struggling in play with a goose and is triumphant.
The composition of the group is admirable, and the zest of the
sport is delightfully brought out. Observe too that the
characteristic forms of infancy--the large head, short legs, plump
body and limbs--are truthfully rendered (cf. page 222). There is a
large number of representations in ancient sculpture of boys with
geese or other aquatic birds; among them are at least three other
copies of this, same group. The original is thought to have been
of bronze.
Fig. 179 is genre again, and is as repulsive as the last example
is charming. It is a drunken old woman, lean and wrinkled, seated
on the ground and clasping her wine-jar between her knees, in a
state of maudlin ecstasy. The head is modern, but another copy of
the statue has the original head, which is of the same character
as this. Ignobility of subject could go no further than in this
work.
It is a pleasure to turn to Fig. 180, which in purity of spirit is
worthy of the best time. The arms are modern, and their direction
may not be quite correct, though it must be nearly so. This
original bronze figure represents a boy in an attitude of prayer.
It is impossible to decide whether the statue was votive or is
simply a genre piece.
Hellenistic art struck out a new path in a class of reliefs of
which Figs. 181 and 182 are examples. There are some restorations.
A gulf separates these works from the friezes of the Parthenon and
the Mausoleum. Whereas relief-sculpture in the classical period
abjured backgrounds and picturesque accessories, we find here a
highly pictorial treatment. The subjects moreover are, in the
instances chosen, of a character to which Greek sculpture before
Alexander's time hardly offers a parallel (yet cf. Fig. 87). In
Fig. 181 we see a ewe giving suck to her lamb. Above, at the
right, is a hut or stall, from whose open door a dog is just
coming out; at the left is an oak tree. In Fig. 182 a lioness
crouches with her two cubs. Above is a sycamore tree, and to the
right of it a group of objects which tell of the rustic worship of
Bacchus. Each of the two reliefs decorated a fountain or something
of the sort. In the one the overturned milk-jar served as a water-
spout; in the other the open mouth of one of the cubs answered the
same purpose. Generally speaking, the pictorial reliefs seem to
have been used for the interior decoration of private and public
buildings. By their subjects many of them bear witness to that
love of country life and that feeling for the charms of landscape
which are the most attractive traits of the Hellenistic period.
The kingdom of Pergamum in western Asia Minor was one of the
smaller states formed out of Alexander's dominions. The city of
Pergamum became a center of Greek learning second only to
Alexandria in importance. Moreover, under Attalus I. (241-197
B.C.) and Eumenes II. (197-159 B.C.) it developed an independent
and powerful school of sculpture, of whose productions we
fortunately possess numerous examples. The most famous of these is
the Dying Gaul or Galatian (Fig. 183), once erroneously called the
Dying Gladiator. Hordes of Gauls had invaded Asia Minor as early
as 278 B.C., and, making their headquarters in the interior, in
the district afterwards known from them as Galatia, had become the
terror and the scourge of the whole region. Attalus I. early in
his reign gained an important victory over these fierce tribes,
and this victory was commemorated by extensive groups of sculpture
both at Pergamum and at Athens. The figure of the Dying Gaul
belongs to this series. The statue was in the possession of
Cardinal Ludovisi as early as 1633, along with a group closely
allied in style, representing a Gaul and his wife, but nothing is
certainly known as to the time and place of its discovery. The
restorations are said to be: the tip of the nose, the left knee-
pan, the toes, and the part of the plinth on which the right arm
rests,[Footnote: Helbig, "Guide to the Public Collections of
Classical Antiquities in Rome," Vol I, No 533.] together with the
objects on it. That the man represented is not a Greek is evident
from the large hands and feet, the coarse skin, the un-Greek
character of the head (Fig. 184). That he is a Gaul is proved by
several points of agreement with what is known from literary
sources of the Gallic peculiarities--the moustache worn with
shaven cheeks and chin, the stiff, pomaded hair growing low in the
neck, the twisted collar or torque. He has been mortally wounded
in battle--the wound is on the right side--and sinks with drooping
head upon his shield and broken battle-horn. His death-struggle,
though clearly marked, is not made violent or repulsive. With
savage heroism he "consents to death, and conquers
agony."[Footnote: Byron, "Childe Harold," IV, 150] Here, then, a
powerful realism is united to a tragic idea, and amid all
vicissitudes of taste this work has never ceased to command a
profound admiration.
Our knowledge of Pergamene art has recently received a great
extension, in consequence of excavations carried on in 1878-86
upon the acropolis of Pergamum in the interest of the Royal Museum
of Berlin. Here were found the remains of numerous buildings,
including an immense altar, or rather altar-platform, which was
perhaps the structure referred to in Revelation II. 13, as
"Satan's throne." This platform, a work of great architectural
magnificence, was built under Eumenes II. Its exterior was
decorated with a sculptured frieze, 7 1/2 feet in height and
something like 400 feet in total length. The fragments of this
great frieze which were found in the course of the German
excavations have been pieced together with infinite patience and
ingenuity and amount to by far the greater part of the whole. The
subject is the gigantomachy, i.e., the battle between the gods and
the rebellious sons of earth (cf. page 134).
Fig. 185 shows the most important group of the whole composition.
Here Zeus recognizable by the thunderbolt in his outstretched
right hand and the aegis upon his left arm, is pitted against
three antagonists. Two of the three are already disabled. The one
at the left, a youthful giant of human form, has sunk to earth,
pierced through the left thigh with a huge, flaming thunderbolt.
The second, also youthful and human, has fallen upon his knees in
front of Zeus and presses his left hand convulsively to a wound
(?) in his right shoulder. The third still fights desperately.
This is a bearded giant, with animal ears and with legs that pass
into long snaky bodies. Around his left arm is wrapped the skin of
some animal; with his right hand (now missing) he is about to hurl
some missile; the left snake, whose head may be seen just above
the giant's left shoulder, is contending, but in vain, with an
eagle, the bird of Zeus.
Fig. 186 adjoins Fig 185 on the right of the latter. [Footnote:
Fig 186 is more reduced in scale, so that the slabs incorrectly
appear to be of unequal height.] Here we have a group in which
Athena is the central figure. The goddess, grasping her antagonist
by the hair, sweeps to right. The youthful giant has great wings,
but is otherwise purely human in form. A serpent, attendant of
Athena, strikes its fangs into the giant's right breast. In front
of Athena, the Earth-goddess, mother of the giants, half emerging
from the ground, pleads for mercy. Above, Victory wings her way to
the scene to place a crown upon Athena's head.
If we compare the Pergamene altar-frieze with scenes of combat
from the best period of Greek art, say with the metopes of the
Parthenon or the best preserved frieze of the Mausoleum, we see
how much more complicated and confused in composition and how much
more violent in spirit is this later work. Yet, though we miss the
"noble simplicity" of the great age, we cannot fail to be
impressed with the Titanic energy which surges through this
stupendous composition. The "decline" of Greek art, if we are to
use that term, cannot be taken to imply the exhaustion of artistic
vitality.
The existence of a flourishing school of sculpture at Rhodes
during the Hellenistic period is attested by our literary sources,
as well as by artists' inscriptions found on the spot. Of the
actual productions of that school we possess only the group of
Laocoon and his sons (Fig. 187). This was found in Rome in 1506,
on the site of the palace of Titus. The principal modern parts
are: the right arm of Laocoon with the adjacent parts of the
snake, the right arm of the younger son with the coil of the snake
around it, and the right hand and wrist of the older son. These
restorations are bad. The right arm of Laocoon should be bent so
as to bring the hand behind the head, and the right hand of the
younger son should fall limply backward.
Laocoon was a Trojan priest who, having committed grievous sin,
was visited with a fearful punishment. On a certain occasion when
he was engaged with his two sons in performing sacrifice, they
were attacked by a pair of huge serpents, miraculously sent, and
died a miserable death. The sculptors--for the group, according to
Pliny, was the joint work of three Rhodian artists--have put
before us the moving spectacle of this doom. Laocoon, his body
convulsed and his face distorted by the torture of poison, his
mouth open for a groan or a cry, has sunk upon the altar and
struggles in the agony of death. The younger son is already past
resistance; his left hand lies feebly on the head of the snake
that bites him and the last breath escapes his lips. The older
son, not yet bitten, but probably not destined to escape, strives
to free himself from the coil about his ankle and at the same time
looks with sympathetic horror upon his father's sufferings.
No work of sculpture of ancient or modern times has given rise to
such an extensive literature as the Laocoon. None has been more
lauded and more blamed. Hawthorne "felt the Laocoon very
powerfully, though very quietly; an immortal agony, with a strange
calmness diffused through it, so that it resembles the vast rage
of the sea, calm on account of its immensity." [Footnote: "Italian
Note-books," under date of March 10,1858.] Ruskin, on the other
hand, thinks "that no group has exercised so pernicious an
influence on art as this; a subject ill chosen, meanly conceived,
and unnaturally treated, recommended to imitation by subtleties of
execution and accumulation of technical knowledge," [Footnote:
"Modern Painters," Part II, Section II, Chap. III.] Of the two verdicts
the latter is surely much nearer the truth. The calmness which
Hawthorne thought he saw in the Laocoon is not there; there is
only a terrible torment. Battle, wounds, and death were staple
themes of Greek sculpture from first to last; but nowhere else is
the representation of physical suffering, pure and simple, so
forced upon us, so made the "be-all and end-all" of a Greek work.
As for the date of the group, opinion still varies considerably.
The probabilities seem to point to a date not far removed from
that of the Pergamene altar; i.e., to the first half of the second
century B.C.
Macedonia and Greece became a Roman province in 146 B.C.; the
kingdom of Pergamum in 133 B.C. These political changes, it is
true, made no immediate difference to the cause of art. Greek
sculpture went on, presently transferring its chief seat to Rome,
as the most favorable place of patronage. What is called Roman
sculpture is, for the most part, simply Greek sculpture under
Roman rule. But in the Roman period we find no great, creative
epoch of art history; moreover, the tendencies of the times have
already received considerable illustration. At this point,
therefore, we may break off this sketch.
CHAPTER XI.
GREEK PAINTING.
The art of painting was in as high esteem in Greece as the art of
sculpture and, if we may believe the testimony of Greek and Roman
writers, achieved results as important and admirable. But the
works of the great Greek painters have utterly perished, and
imagination, though guided by ancient descriptions and by such
painted designs as have come down to us, can restore them but
dimly and doubtfully. The subject may therefore here be dismissed
with comparative brevity.
In default of pictures by the great Greek masters, an especial
interest attaches to the work of humbler craftsmen of the brush.
One class of such work exists in abundance--the painted
decorations upon earthenware vases. Tens of thousands of these
vases have been brought to light from tombs and sanctuaries on
Greek and Italian sites and the number is constantly increasing.
Thanks to the indestructible character of pottery, the designs are
often intact. Now the materials and methods employed by the vase-
painters and the spaces at their disposal were very different from
those of mural or easel paintings. Consequently inferences must
not be hastily drawn from designs upon vases as to the composition
and coloring of the great masterpieces. But the best of the vase-
painters, especially in the early fifth century, were men of
remarkable talent, and all of them were influenced by the general
artistic tendencies of their respective periods. Their work,
therefore, contributes an important element to our knowledge of
Greek art history.
Having touched in Chapter II. upon the earlier styles of Greek
pottery, I begin here with a vase of Attic manufacture, decorated,
as an inscription on it shows, by Clitias, but commonly called
from its finder the Francois vase (Fig. 188). It may be assigned
to the first half of the sixth century, and probably to somewhere
near the beginning of that period. It is an early specimen of the
class of black-figured vases, as they are called. The propriety of
the name is obvious from the illustration. The objects represented
were painted in black varnish upon the reddish clay, and the vase
was then fired. Subsequently anatomical details, patterns of
garments, and so on were indicated by means of lines cut through
the varnish with a sharp instrument. Moreover, the exposed parts
of the female figures--faces, hands, arms, and feet--were covered
with white paint, this being the regular method in the black-
figured style of distinguishing the flesh of female from that of
male figures.
The decoration of the Francois vase is arranged in horizontal
bands or zones. The subjects are almost wholly legendary and the
vase is therefore a perfect mine of information for the student of
Greek mythology. Our present interest, however, is rather in the
character of the drawing. This may be better judged from Fig. 189,
which is taken from the zone encircling the middle of the vase.
The subject is the wedding of the mortal, Peleus, to the sea-
goddess, Thetis, the wedding whose issue was Achilles, the great
hero of the Iliad. To this ceremony came gods and goddesses and
other supernatural beings. Our illustration shows Dionysus
(Bacchus), god of wine, with a wine-jar on his shoulder and what
is meant for a vine-branch above him. Behind him walk three female
figures, who are the personified Seasons. Last comes a group
consisting of two Muses and a four-horse chariot bearing Zeus, the
chief of the gods, and Hera, his wife. The principle of isocephaly
is observed on the vase as in a frieze of relief-sculpture (page
145). The figures are almost all drawn in profile, though the body
is often shown more nearly from the front, e.g., in the case of
the Seasons, and the eyes are always drawn as in front view. Out
of the great multitude of figures on the vase there are only four
in which the artist has shown the full face. Two of these are
intentionally ugly Gorgons on the handles; the two others come
within the limits of our specimen illustration. If Dionysus here
appears almost like a caricature, that is only because the
decorator is so little accustomed to drawing the face in front
view. There are other interesting analogies between the designs on
the vase and contemporary reliefs. For example, the bodies, when
not disguised by garments, show an unnatural smallness at the
waist, the feet of walking figures are planted flat on the ground,
and there are cases in which the body and neck are so twisted that
the face is turned in exactly the opposite direction to the feet.
On the whole, Clitias shows rather more skill than a contemporary
sculptor, probably because of the two arts that of the vase-
painter had been the longer cultivated.
The black-figured ware continued to be produced in Attica through
the sixth century and on into the fifth. Fig. 190 gives a specimen
of the work of an interesting vase-painter in this style, Execias
by name, who probably belongs about the middle of the sixth
century. The subject is Achilles slaying in battle the Amazon
queen, Penthesilea. The drawing of Execias is distinguished by an
altogether unusual care and minuteness of detail, and if the whole
body of his work, as known to us from several signed vases, could
be here presented, it would be easily seen that his proficiency
was well in advance of that of Clitias. Obvious archaisms,
however, remain. Especially noticeable is the unnatural twisting
of the bodies. A minor point of interest is afforded by the
Amazon's shield, which the artist has not succeeded in rendering
truthfully in side view. That is a rather difficult problem in
perspective, which was not solved until after many experiments.
Some time before the end of the sixth century, perhaps as early as
540, a new method of decorating pottery was invented in Attica.
The principal coloring matter used continued to be the lustrous
black varnish; but instead of filling in the outlines of the
figures with black, the decorator, after outlining the figures by
means of a broad stroke of the brush, covered with black the
spaces between the figures, leaving the figures themselves in the
color of the clay. Vases thus decorated are called "red-figured."
In this style incised lines ceased to be used, and details were
rendered chiefly by means of the black varnish or, for certain
purposes, of the same material diluted till it became of a reddish
hue. The red-figured and black-figured styles coexisted for
perhaps half a century, but the new style ultimately drove the old
one out of the market.
Pages:
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 | 11 |
12