DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0395
OFFERING FOR VICTORY AT sEGOSPOTAMI. 359
CHAPTER XXX.
THE SCHOOL OF POLYCLEITUS.
An artist like Polycleitus, whose works were the offspring of clear
intelligence and careful study, rather than of inspired genius and
lively imagination, would naturally have a greater number of pupils
than a Pheidias. His aims were not the very highest, but he tho-
roughly attained them, and there was nothing altogether hopeless or
absurd in the attempt to follow him. While, therefore, the great Attic
master can hardly be said to have formed a distinct school at all, we
are able to trace the teaching and influence of Polycleitus through
four or five successive generations of disciples. It was to him and to
his school, in a very great measure, that his country was indebted for
the extraordinary prevalence of that pure and refined taste, and
accurate workmanship, which surprises us in the productions of even
the ordinary artisan ; and that passionate love for real beauty in art,
which seems to have pervaded the whole Greek race.
Of the immediate pupils of Polycleitus the following names arc
recorded : Asopodorus, Alexis, Phryno, the two Arcadians Athenodorus
and Demeas of Cleitor,1 Canachus, and Pericleitus. Some of these
were employed in the execution of the great offering at Olympia,
made by the Lacedaemonians for their naval victory under Lysander
at /Egcspotami. This monument—which is the more interesting
because it reminds us of a similar work by Pheidias offered for the
victory at Marathon—consisted of a group of nearly forty bronze statues
arranged in a double row, probably on a semicircular basis. Even
the insane and baneful ambition of a Lysander must have been fully
1 l'lin. X. //. xxxiv. 50. I'ausan. x. 9. 8, 9.
CHAPTER XXX.
THE SCHOOL OF POLYCLEITUS.
An artist like Polycleitus, whose works were the offspring of clear
intelligence and careful study, rather than of inspired genius and
lively imagination, would naturally have a greater number of pupils
than a Pheidias. His aims were not the very highest, but he tho-
roughly attained them, and there was nothing altogether hopeless or
absurd in the attempt to follow him. While, therefore, the great Attic
master can hardly be said to have formed a distinct school at all, we
are able to trace the teaching and influence of Polycleitus through
four or five successive generations of disciples. It was to him and to
his school, in a very great measure, that his country was indebted for
the extraordinary prevalence of that pure and refined taste, and
accurate workmanship, which surprises us in the productions of even
the ordinary artisan ; and that passionate love for real beauty in art,
which seems to have pervaded the whole Greek race.
Of the immediate pupils of Polycleitus the following names arc
recorded : Asopodorus, Alexis, Phryno, the two Arcadians Athenodorus
and Demeas of Cleitor,1 Canachus, and Pericleitus. Some of these
were employed in the execution of the great offering at Olympia,
made by the Lacedaemonians for their naval victory under Lysander
at /Egcspotami. This monument—which is the more interesting
because it reminds us of a similar work by Pheidias offered for the
victory at Marathon—consisted of a group of nearly forty bronze statues
arranged in a double row, probably on a semicircular basis. Even
the insane and baneful ambition of a Lysander must have been fully
1 l'lin. X. //. xxxiv. 50. I'ausan. x. 9. 8, 9.