DOI Seite / Zitierlink:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.14144#0462
426
THE NIOBE GROUP.
in the unveiled lustre of her beauty—but the subordinate deities who
formed their train, the Bacchanalian Thiasos, the Satyrs, Sileni, and
Wood Nymphs, and all the wild strange melancholy monsters who
represent the changing moods of the restless and ever complaining
ocean. The art of Scopas rings the changes on the whole scale of
human emotions and desires, and ranges through the whole region of
poetic inspiration, from the most tender love song and the holiest
hymn to the wildest dithyramb. He embodies for us the rapture of
the soul inspired, possessed, and enslaved, by music, in his Apollo
Citharcedus ; the longing desire and the brooding regrets of love in
his Himeros and Pothos ; the phrensy of the religious devotee in his
Bacchante; coarse, unbridled passion in his jovial half-bestial Satyr; the
wild yearning of the mariner in his sad yet boisterous Tritons ; the
deep love of the mother in the broken-hearted Niobc; and the
agonised fear of pain and death in her devoted children. He did
more than any other artist to represent nature in her softest and ten-
dcrcst as well as her wildest and most unconstrained manifestations,
and conquered for Plastic art whole regions of passion and pathos
which had hitherto lain outside its sphere.
The art of Scopas was essentially ideal, and in this respect he
stands far above all other artists of his school. His was not, indeed,
the ideality of Pheidias. He did not rise to the conception of the
Olympian Zeus—it was only in the large calm soul of the greatest of
artists that such a form could be reflected. But in each ripple of the
agitated heart of Scopas, stirred by the breeze of passion, some lovely
or interesting form was glassed.
He represented exclusively cither Gods, or the embodiments of
moods and feelings, and never condescended to pourtray a merely
human individual, and only one hero, and that one Heracles. As
might be expected too from the nature of his genius, he worked ex-
clusively in marble, which is better fitted for the representation of
soft elegance and beauty and passionate emotion than gold and ivory
or bronze.
THE NIOBE GROUP.
in the unveiled lustre of her beauty—but the subordinate deities who
formed their train, the Bacchanalian Thiasos, the Satyrs, Sileni, and
Wood Nymphs, and all the wild strange melancholy monsters who
represent the changing moods of the restless and ever complaining
ocean. The art of Scopas rings the changes on the whole scale of
human emotions and desires, and ranges through the whole region of
poetic inspiration, from the most tender love song and the holiest
hymn to the wildest dithyramb. He embodies for us the rapture of
the soul inspired, possessed, and enslaved, by music, in his Apollo
Citharcedus ; the longing desire and the brooding regrets of love in
his Himeros and Pothos ; the phrensy of the religious devotee in his
Bacchante; coarse, unbridled passion in his jovial half-bestial Satyr; the
wild yearning of the mariner in his sad yet boisterous Tritons ; the
deep love of the mother in the broken-hearted Niobc; and the
agonised fear of pain and death in her devoted children. He did
more than any other artist to represent nature in her softest and ten-
dcrcst as well as her wildest and most unconstrained manifestations,
and conquered for Plastic art whole regions of passion and pathos
which had hitherto lain outside its sphere.
The art of Scopas was essentially ideal, and in this respect he
stands far above all other artists of his school. His was not, indeed,
the ideality of Pheidias. He did not rise to the conception of the
Olympian Zeus—it was only in the large calm soul of the greatest of
artists that such a form could be reflected. But in each ripple of the
agitated heart of Scopas, stirred by the breeze of passion, some lovely
or interesting form was glassed.
He represented exclusively cither Gods, or the embodiments of
moods and feelings, and never condescended to pourtray a merely
human individual, and only one hero, and that one Heracles. As
might be expected too from the nature of his genius, he worked ex-
clusively in marble, which is better fitted for the representation of
soft elegance and beauty and passionate emotion than gold and ivory
or bronze.