DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.9177#0158
138
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
statues which seem really thought out in three dimensions
until we come to the well-known figure of the Apoxyomenus,
which is usually regarded as a copy of a bronze statue of Lysip-
pus, the court sculptor of Alexander the Great, but which more
probably belongs in fact to the beginning of the third century.1
The more direct imitation of nature, which came in in the
school of Lysippus, though it did not much affect the work of
that master himself, would naturally have the effect of which I
speak.
Passing down history from period to period we see in the
progress of sculpture the gradual victory of practice and deter-
mination. The line of attainment, of successful grappling
with the difficulties of execution, mounts gradually in the human
body, passing from the easier parts of it to those which are
more difficult. In the statue found at Tenea, and sometimes
called the Apollo of Tenea, the feet and lower legs are care-
fully arid, on the whole, correctly represented. In the statues
of half a century later, as in those of the Aegina pediments, or
the so-called Strangford Apollo of the British Museum, we find
a not unsuccessful rendering of all the principal members of
the body; only some parts of the head are inferior. The eye
and the parts about the eye, in which so much expression re-
sides, baffle the Aeginetan artist; the mouth, which is so fre-
quently in motion, he fails to represent in repose; and the hair,
which is unsuited to representation in a hard substance like
marble, is given in a kind of conventional pattern. It is not
until the middle of the fifth century that these difficulties are
met successfully.
It is especially in the rendering of the head that even an
eye not thoroughly familiar with Greek sculpture and paint-
ing can easily discern the stages by which stiff archaism passes
into perfect mastery. The development is slowest in the case
1 This I have tried to prove in an article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies,
Vol. XXIII., p. 130.
PRINCIPLES OP GREEK ART
CHAP.
statues which seem really thought out in three dimensions
until we come to the well-known figure of the Apoxyomenus,
which is usually regarded as a copy of a bronze statue of Lysip-
pus, the court sculptor of Alexander the Great, but which more
probably belongs in fact to the beginning of the third century.1
The more direct imitation of nature, which came in in the
school of Lysippus, though it did not much affect the work of
that master himself, would naturally have the effect of which I
speak.
Passing down history from period to period we see in the
progress of sculpture the gradual victory of practice and deter-
mination. The line of attainment, of successful grappling
with the difficulties of execution, mounts gradually in the human
body, passing from the easier parts of it to those which are
more difficult. In the statue found at Tenea, and sometimes
called the Apollo of Tenea, the feet and lower legs are care-
fully arid, on the whole, correctly represented. In the statues
of half a century later, as in those of the Aegina pediments, or
the so-called Strangford Apollo of the British Museum, we find
a not unsuccessful rendering of all the principal members of
the body; only some parts of the head are inferior. The eye
and the parts about the eye, in which so much expression re-
sides, baffle the Aeginetan artist; the mouth, which is so fre-
quently in motion, he fails to represent in repose; and the hair,
which is unsuited to representation in a hard substance like
marble, is given in a kind of conventional pattern. It is not
until the middle of the fifth century that these difficulties are
met successfully.
It is especially in the rendering of the head that even an
eye not thoroughly familiar with Greek sculpture and paint-
ing can easily discern the stages by which stiff archaism passes
into perfect mastery. The development is slowest in the case
1 This I have tried to prove in an article in the Journal of Hellenic Studies,
Vol. XXIII., p. 130.