DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0441
ACROTERIA FOUND ON DELOS. 407
has been preserved, showing that figures of Nike, in exactly the same pose as
Paionios' statue, crowned the corners of this temple at Delos.
While the group, already discussed, of Boreas and Oreithyia seems to have
direct reference to Attic myth, the acroterion of the opposite end must have
been in a more general sense Ionian in its character.7/9 Here the large god-
dess Eos carries off in her arms the young Kephalos, to give him immortality ;
while his dog leaps away, frightened, from the scene, and two maidens flee,
one in each direction. This draped, winged Eos, speeding away with a nude
lad in her arms, corresponds to, and yet contrasts beautifully with, the power-
ful nude Boreas carrying off the draped Oreithyia.
To gain an idea of the time when these works must have been executed,
there should be noticed the similarity in the treatment of the drapery to that
of Paionios' Nike, as well as the build of the forms, less luxurious than those
of the fourth century. Thus, as in well-certified works of the Pheidian age,
here also the female shoulders are broad and massive, the breasts are high and
wide apart, and the hips are narrow. Moreover, the eyes are not deeply set,
as we may notice in the head of Oreithyia; and the hair is severely simple in
its arrangement and treatment, as in the fifth century, but not in later times.
Such features, as well as certain architectural peculiarities of the building which
these sculptures adorned, doubtless fix their date as some time during the latter
half of the fifth century B.C., or, as more closely conjectured by Eurtwangler,
425 B.C., when great festivities to Apollo, and special purifications of his
temple on Delos, were observed.'So
But with all the general similarity between these Delian sculptures and
those known to us from Attica, as seen in a certain severity of style, yet how
different the stormy speed and intensely picture-like treatment of these com-
positions, seeming in their fluttering lines fairly to defy all laws arising from the
ponderous and fragile nature of their material. In consequence of these peculi-
arities, they appear, not to have been executed under Attic influence, but show
great affinity with Paionios' Nike, and the marbles of the so-called Nereid monu-
ment discovered in Lykia. The tempting theory to account for these shades
of difference has been proposed by Furtwangler, that, in this family of sculp-
tures, we have the work of the older, broader Ionian stock, in which sculpture
must have been largely under the influence of great painters, in whom it was
especially rich, but of whom we chance to know little, their activity in Athens
alone being recorded.
From Asia Minor itself, that cradle of ancient Ionian art, we have the name
of but one master of this age, namely, Colotes, who aided Pheidias at Olympia.
Although as yet sculptures of this developed age have hardly been found in
Ionian Asia Minor, still, in neighboring Lykia to the south, monuments so near
of kin to those we have been discussing have been found, that we may appro-
priately consider them here.
has been preserved, showing that figures of Nike, in exactly the same pose as
Paionios' statue, crowned the corners of this temple at Delos.
While the group, already discussed, of Boreas and Oreithyia seems to have
direct reference to Attic myth, the acroterion of the opposite end must have
been in a more general sense Ionian in its character.7/9 Here the large god-
dess Eos carries off in her arms the young Kephalos, to give him immortality ;
while his dog leaps away, frightened, from the scene, and two maidens flee,
one in each direction. This draped, winged Eos, speeding away with a nude
lad in her arms, corresponds to, and yet contrasts beautifully with, the power-
ful nude Boreas carrying off the draped Oreithyia.
To gain an idea of the time when these works must have been executed,
there should be noticed the similarity in the treatment of the drapery to that
of Paionios' Nike, as well as the build of the forms, less luxurious than those
of the fourth century. Thus, as in well-certified works of the Pheidian age,
here also the female shoulders are broad and massive, the breasts are high and
wide apart, and the hips are narrow. Moreover, the eyes are not deeply set,
as we may notice in the head of Oreithyia; and the hair is severely simple in
its arrangement and treatment, as in the fifth century, but not in later times.
Such features, as well as certain architectural peculiarities of the building which
these sculptures adorned, doubtless fix their date as some time during the latter
half of the fifth century B.C., or, as more closely conjectured by Eurtwangler,
425 B.C., when great festivities to Apollo, and special purifications of his
temple on Delos, were observed.'So
But with all the general similarity between these Delian sculptures and
those known to us from Attica, as seen in a certain severity of style, yet how
different the stormy speed and intensely picture-like treatment of these com-
positions, seeming in their fluttering lines fairly to defy all laws arising from the
ponderous and fragile nature of their material. In consequence of these peculi-
arities, they appear, not to have been executed under Attic influence, but show
great affinity with Paionios' Nike, and the marbles of the so-called Nereid monu-
ment discovered in Lykia. The tempting theory to account for these shades
of difference has been proposed by Furtwangler, that, in this family of sculp-
tures, we have the work of the older, broader Ionian stock, in which sculpture
must have been largely under the influence of great painters, in whom it was
especially rich, but of whom we chance to know little, their activity in Athens
alone being recorded.
From Asia Minor itself, that cradle of ancient Ionian art, we have the name
of but one master of this age, namely, Colotes, who aided Pheidias at Olympia.
Although as yet sculptures of this developed age have hardly been found in
Ionian Asia Minor, still, in neighboring Lykia to the south, monuments so near
of kin to those we have been discussing have been found, that we may appro-
priately consider them here.