DOI Page / Citation link:
https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.52591#0104
88 METOPES OF THE SICYONIAN TREASURY
painting. The hair about the horns and the skin-folds of
the eye are elegantly stylized. The effect of this metope
is quite peculiar, one is tempted to say un-Greek. Men
and animals are closely packed together, not with primitive
horror vacui, but in conscious aiming at massed effect. The
men, in heavy smooth cloaks, whose red surfaces were in
picturesque contrast with the bare, little-articulated legs,
which below are finished off by the large sandals with their
material well brought out; and the bulls, which are too far
in the background to make any other effect than that of
thickly packed crowds, whose heads are so monotonously
stylized in big features to be effective at a distance, appear,
to one who knows the other metopes, as creations of a differ-
ent world of art. For there is in this little relief some of
the stiff stereotyped formalism of the East, but at the same
time some of the vigour of the East, in that the detail is not
disconnected with the movement or the type, but co-operates
in a wonderfully expressive whole. If, as the workmanship
might well indicate, it is really the same artist who executed
all the metopes of the little Sicyonian Treasury, this gives
us an insight into the nature of a nameless artist of rich
luxuriance and amazing suppleness in the solution of different
problems in a different but equally effective treatment. What
a contrast between the little slender frightened woman,
alone and bending over the heavily marching bull, between
the solitary and formidable vigour of the Calydonian Boar,
and this last metope, where bristling lances slope over
thick, uniformly shaped and coloured groups of men and
animals I
The painted inscriptions inform us that the relief repre-
sented the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, and the sons
of Aphareus, Idas and Lynceus, the last-named not being
preserved in the relief. The four men had in concert, as
was then the custom of princes, made a raid on other people’s
oxen, and in the metope they are driving them away from
the Arcadian highlands where they had grazed. The
legend, which had already been treated in the Cypria, but
reached its fairest development in Pindar's tenth N emean Ode,
tells the sequel as follows : “ The Dioscuri had the same
mother, Leda, but Polydeuces was begotten by Zeus, while
painting. The hair about the horns and the skin-folds of
the eye are elegantly stylized. The effect of this metope
is quite peculiar, one is tempted to say un-Greek. Men
and animals are closely packed together, not with primitive
horror vacui, but in conscious aiming at massed effect. The
men, in heavy smooth cloaks, whose red surfaces were in
picturesque contrast with the bare, little-articulated legs,
which below are finished off by the large sandals with their
material well brought out; and the bulls, which are too far
in the background to make any other effect than that of
thickly packed crowds, whose heads are so monotonously
stylized in big features to be effective at a distance, appear,
to one who knows the other metopes, as creations of a differ-
ent world of art. For there is in this little relief some of
the stiff stereotyped formalism of the East, but at the same
time some of the vigour of the East, in that the detail is not
disconnected with the movement or the type, but co-operates
in a wonderfully expressive whole. If, as the workmanship
might well indicate, it is really the same artist who executed
all the metopes of the little Sicyonian Treasury, this gives
us an insight into the nature of a nameless artist of rich
luxuriance and amazing suppleness in the solution of different
problems in a different but equally effective treatment. What
a contrast between the little slender frightened woman,
alone and bending over the heavily marching bull, between
the solitary and formidable vigour of the Calydonian Boar,
and this last metope, where bristling lances slope over
thick, uniformly shaped and coloured groups of men and
animals I
The painted inscriptions inform us that the relief repre-
sented the Dioscuri, Castor and Polydeuces, and the sons
of Aphareus, Idas and Lynceus, the last-named not being
preserved in the relief. The four men had in concert, as
was then the custom of princes, made a raid on other people’s
oxen, and in the metope they are driving them away from
the Arcadian highlands where they had grazed. The
legend, which had already been treated in the Cypria, but
reached its fairest development in Pindar's tenth N emean Ode,
tells the sequel as follows : “ The Dioscuri had the same
mother, Leda, but Polydeuces was begotten by Zeus, while