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Perry, Walter Copland
Greek and Roman sculpture: a popular introduction to the history of Greek and Roman sculpture — London, 1882

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https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0389

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THE DORYPHORUS OF POLYCLEITUS.

353

The Doryphorus, By far the most celebrated work of Poly-
cleitus, and the one in which his scope and style were most fully
represented, was the so-called Doryphorus (' The Spear-bearer'). This
was a statue of a robust youth, ' viriliter puerum,' whose whole frame
had been developed to its full size and strength by gymnastic and
martial exercises. He was represented as standing, quiet and motion-
less, with a lance in his hand. It is referred to by Ouintilian, who says
that the most celebrated artists,' when they wish to mould or paint the
most beautiful human forms, never fall into the error of taking some
Bogoas or Megabyzus as their model, but that celebrated Doryphorus
fit for the palaestra or the field of battle.' This work, too, was, in one
sense, though not the highest, ideal; inasmuch as no such figure ever
existed. It was the human form freed from all the inherited or
acquired defects which are found in every living man. It was, no doubt,
the embodiment of the great artist's theory of the proportions of the
manly frame, for Pliny appears to say that he was' the only man who
has left a manual of his art in a work of art!1 Polycleitus is also said
to have committed his system to writing in a treatise, in which he laid
down the proportion of the different parts of the body to one another
—' of finger to finger, palm of the hand to fingers, whole hand to wrist,
hand and wrist to fore-arm, fore-arm to upper-arm, and of all to each
—as is written in the canon of Polycleitus.'2 There seems good
reason to believe that the Doryphorus was identical with the figure
so often referred to by ancient writers as ' the canon ' (o Kavcov) of Poly-
cleitus,3 in which he represented the normal youthful athlete according
to the scheme laid down in his written treatise. Cicero alludes to
this statue, saying that it was the teacher of the sculptor Lysippus.
Lucian, too, rather to our surprise, considering the somewhat heavy4
type of Polycleitus' figures, likens his idea of a perfect dancer to this

' AT. H. xxxiv. 55 : ' Solusque hominum
Jttem ipsam fecisse arlis Open judicatur.'
TUl is Otto J aim's interpretation.

"Galen. Dt J'lac. llifp. ct Plat. 5.
yitruvius (iii. i) expressed these proportions
>n numbers, and the question is whether he
followed the Canon of Polycleitus.

* Friedr. {/:,ius/. 118), Thiersch {Epochal.
357)i and Brunn [KituiUr-Gesck. i. 215)

maintain the contrary. The question de-
pends somewhat on the punctuation of the
passage in Plin. xxxiv. 55, 'puerum fecit, et
quern canona vocant,' or 'puerum; fecit et
quern canona vocant,'&c. The text as it
stands seems to me to be in favour of two
statues, but the matter is not decided by
this one passage.

• Cic. BfUt. 86. 296; Orat. ii. 5.

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