DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0120
100
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART chap, vii
but in almost all cases this psychological law holds with a regu-
larity almost as great as is found in the working of the laws of
nature. One finds figures stooping, or kneeling, or in a variety
of other attitudes; but the frontal law still holds.
The law of frontality is also illustrated by a passage in Dio-
dorus (I., 98), who relates that two sculptors of the sixth cen-
tury, Telecles and Theodorus, of Samos, were set to make a
statue of the Pythian Apollo. "The story runs that one-half of
the statue was made at Samos by Telecles, while the other half
was fashioned at Ephesus by his brother Theodorus, and that
when the parts were fitted together they joined so exactly that
the whole statue appeared to be the work of one artist. . . . The
statue at Samos, being made in accordance with the Egyptian
system, is bisected by a line which runs from the crown of the
head through the midst of the body to the groin, dividing it
into precisely equal and similar halves."
When Diodorus says that this manner of representation is
Egyptian and not Greek, he means that it was quite foreign to
the later Greek art with which he was familiar. It does be-
long, as Dr. Lange has shown, to Greek art before 500 B.C.
A comment upon, or indeed an amplification of, the law may
be found in an unfinished statue from Naxos, discussed by Mr.
Ernest Gardner (Fig. 15).1 In this figure any section cut hori-
zontally is oblong in form, the front, back and sides almost flat,
with little more than a bevelling at the corners. ■ This seems to
show that in producing the statue from an oblong block of
marble, the artist may have proceeded by drawing in outline on
the front and side of the block the front and side aspect of the
desired statue, and then cutting right through the block, perhaps
with a saw, in both directions, following the two outlines. Out
of the mass thus produced, face, legs and arms would be roughly
cut, the transition from front to side would be smoothed over,
and the result would be approximately of the form required.
1 Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. XI., p. 130.
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART chap, vii
but in almost all cases this psychological law holds with a regu-
larity almost as great as is found in the working of the laws of
nature. One finds figures stooping, or kneeling, or in a variety
of other attitudes; but the frontal law still holds.
The law of frontality is also illustrated by a passage in Dio-
dorus (I., 98), who relates that two sculptors of the sixth cen-
tury, Telecles and Theodorus, of Samos, were set to make a
statue of the Pythian Apollo. "The story runs that one-half of
the statue was made at Samos by Telecles, while the other half
was fashioned at Ephesus by his brother Theodorus, and that
when the parts were fitted together they joined so exactly that
the whole statue appeared to be the work of one artist. . . . The
statue at Samos, being made in accordance with the Egyptian
system, is bisected by a line which runs from the crown of the
head through the midst of the body to the groin, dividing it
into precisely equal and similar halves."
When Diodorus says that this manner of representation is
Egyptian and not Greek, he means that it was quite foreign to
the later Greek art with which he was familiar. It does be-
long, as Dr. Lange has shown, to Greek art before 500 B.C.
A comment upon, or indeed an amplification of, the law may
be found in an unfinished statue from Naxos, discussed by Mr.
Ernest Gardner (Fig. 15).1 In this figure any section cut hori-
zontally is oblong in form, the front, back and sides almost flat,
with little more than a bevelling at the corners. ■ This seems to
show that in producing the statue from an oblong block of
marble, the artist may have proceeded by drawing in outline on
the front and side of the block the front and side aspect of the
desired statue, and then cutting right through the block, perhaps
with a saw, in both directions, following the two outlines. Out
of the mass thus produced, face, legs and arms would be roughly
cut, the transition from front to side would be smoothed over,
and the result would be approximately of the form required.
1 Journal of Hellenic Studies, Vol. XI., p. 130.