DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.5253#0649
6l2
THE HELLENISTIC AGE OF SCULPTURE.
received from older times (p. 389). Plump babyhood seems now to have been
represented with all its unplastic roundness and presumptuous strength, some-
times wrestling with an animal, sometimes carrying its pets or a vase. Such
is the very celebrated boy with a goose, in numerous repetitions (Pig. 247) at
Rome, Munich, Paris, and elsewhere. An impudent little fellow, full of life
and spirits, seizes a goose as large as himself by the neck, and struggles with
it like a hero. The contrast between this chubby baby form, and its heroic
action, makes the charm of the work. For him, the conflict is a very serious
one, quite as much so as was the strangling of the Nemean lion to Heracles.
The goose was a well-nigh indispensable part of domestic life in antiquity.
It was prized as the symbol of the perfect housewife, and women and children
delighted to play with this animal. We can readily believe, then, that the
motive of this group was one which the sculptor had frequently seen in daily
life, perhaps in his own household. Happily, the original of this work is trace-
able directly to a sculptor who lived in the early
part of the third century B.C. This master,
Boethos by name, probably from Chalkedon, in
the northern part of Asia Minor, was a cele-
brated chiseller in fine metals ; and Pliny men-
tions with praise his bronze, a boy struggling
with a goose. "9s Pausanias saw in Olympia
the figure of a seated child in gilded bronze, by
Boethos ; and it is possible, as Furtwangler sug-
gests, that a figure much like the boy with the
goose may be traced back to this Olympia origi-
nal. "99 This little figure, repeated at least eight
times in different museums, sits on the ground in
childlike fashion, holding his goose tightly under
one arm, and, while raising the other, calls lustily
for help. Here also the charm lies in the amus-
ing contrast between the intensity of the child-
ish trouble, and the insignificance of its cause,
— between his earnestness and his impotence.
At this time, the simpler motives of an earlier age were translated into
more realistic and sometimes rustic ones. The theme represented in the bronze
boy of the Capitol, whether a genuine or only an imitated archaic work, is one
of the more celebrated of those which underwent this transformation. Thus
two replicas, one in marble in the British Museum (Fig. 248), and another, in
bronze, in the possession of Baron Rothschild, in Paris, are in the full spirit of
this Hellenistic time.1200 The closed lips, placid expression, and archaic hair
of the severer work of the Capitol, are widely different from the realistic frame
and features of the marble boy of the British Museum. The back of the latter
Fig. 247. Babe struggling with a Goose.
After Boiithos. Louvre.
THE HELLENISTIC AGE OF SCULPTURE.
received from older times (p. 389). Plump babyhood seems now to have been
represented with all its unplastic roundness and presumptuous strength, some-
times wrestling with an animal, sometimes carrying its pets or a vase. Such
is the very celebrated boy with a goose, in numerous repetitions (Pig. 247) at
Rome, Munich, Paris, and elsewhere. An impudent little fellow, full of life
and spirits, seizes a goose as large as himself by the neck, and struggles with
it like a hero. The contrast between this chubby baby form, and its heroic
action, makes the charm of the work. For him, the conflict is a very serious
one, quite as much so as was the strangling of the Nemean lion to Heracles.
The goose was a well-nigh indispensable part of domestic life in antiquity.
It was prized as the symbol of the perfect housewife, and women and children
delighted to play with this animal. We can readily believe, then, that the
motive of this group was one which the sculptor had frequently seen in daily
life, perhaps in his own household. Happily, the original of this work is trace-
able directly to a sculptor who lived in the early
part of the third century B.C. This master,
Boethos by name, probably from Chalkedon, in
the northern part of Asia Minor, was a cele-
brated chiseller in fine metals ; and Pliny men-
tions with praise his bronze, a boy struggling
with a goose. "9s Pausanias saw in Olympia
the figure of a seated child in gilded bronze, by
Boethos ; and it is possible, as Furtwangler sug-
gests, that a figure much like the boy with the
goose may be traced back to this Olympia origi-
nal. "99 This little figure, repeated at least eight
times in different museums, sits on the ground in
childlike fashion, holding his goose tightly under
one arm, and, while raising the other, calls lustily
for help. Here also the charm lies in the amus-
ing contrast between the intensity of the child-
ish trouble, and the insignificance of its cause,
— between his earnestness and his impotence.
At this time, the simpler motives of an earlier age were translated into
more realistic and sometimes rustic ones. The theme represented in the bronze
boy of the Capitol, whether a genuine or only an imitated archaic work, is one
of the more celebrated of those which underwent this transformation. Thus
two replicas, one in marble in the British Museum (Fig. 248), and another, in
bronze, in the possession of Baron Rothschild, in Paris, are in the full spirit of
this Hellenistic time.1200 The closed lips, placid expression, and archaic hair
of the severer work of the Capitol, are widely different from the realistic frame
and features of the marble boy of the British Museum. The back of the latter
Fig. 247. Babe struggling with a Goose.
After Boiithos. Louvre.