Gardner, Percy: The principles of Greek art (London, 1924)

CHAPTER XI

portrait sculpture

The notions as to ancient portraiture ordinarily current
among scholars are quite erroneous. It is commonly supposed
that the Greeks neglected this branch of art, that their talent
did not lie in the direction of portraying individuals, and that
it was reserved for the Romans to produce portraits which we
can admire. This notion is exaggerated, and indeed false.
It is true that in the great time of Greek art between the time
of Pericles and that of Alexander, the sculpture of the Greeks
was so strongly directed to the ideal that even their portraits
seem to us somewhat impersonal and unreal. But the Greek
artists of the third and second centuries have bequeathed to us
a magnificent series of portraits, some of the very highest class.
It is also certain that the finest of the portraits of Romans, those
of the time before Augustus, are of Greek workmanship. As
to the portraits made under the Roman Empire, we cannot be
sure whether they were made by Greeks or Romans : but it is
almost certain that the best of them are by Greeks; and even
the Romans who made portraits had all studied in Greek schools,
and all of them who are of any account carry on the line of
Hellenistic portraiture.

Few people have any notion of the number of Greek portraits
which have come down to us. They abound in all great mu-
seums, and are to be counted, not by the hundred, but by the
thousand. In the museums of Rome especially they abound.
Of the portraits of Euripides, Bernoulli catalogues twenty-six
examples; of those of Demosthenes, thirty-two. Of Greek and

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