DOI article:
No. III: The influence of athletic games upon greek art
DOI Page / Citation link:https://doi.org/10.11588/diglit.11444#0439
III.]
APPENDIX.
403
action. It is here that the systematic training of each organ of the
human body brought home to them the plastic anatomy of man, and
that in the a-KLa^a-^ia, in which the various stages of each game were
gone through, the sculptor had impressed upon his eye in living statues
the typical attitudes of each game.
A still more direct proof is to be found in the fact that in this period
the custom arose of commemorating athletic victories by statues. And
now, as I have said above, the sculptor is brought face to face with man,
and must bend his art and craft to the service of actual nature.
According to Pausanias the first statues set up to athletic victors
were those of Praxidamas and of Rhexibios, who were victors in
the fifty-ninth and sixty-first Olympiads, that is, about 530 B.C. They
were of wood, and, according to his description of the one to Arrhachion,
were very similar to the statue of the Apollo of Tenea. The influence
of the palaestra and the introduction of the custom of erecting statues to
victors did not take immediate effect, or at once convert imperfect art
to a state of perfection, but it was inch by inch that conventionality
strove to maintain its ground, and step by step that art advanced
towards nature within this comparatively short period of fifty years. So
we can see in the extant statues the gradual growth of freedom and the
falling away of the archaic fetters. In these three instances we have the
chief stages of this progress. In the Apollo of Tenea at Munich, in
attitude, in the composition of the parts of the body and in the
modelling of the surface, we have hardness and woodenness far removed
from the actual appearance of the living organism. In the so-called
"Strangford Apollo," in the British Museum, in whom I see an athlete
belonging to the school of Aegina, we have a great advance in the
direction of nature. Though the attitude is still conventional, the feet
placed one before the other, the arms pinned to the sides, the head
straight forward at right angles to the chest, the limbs seem joined more
organically to the body, and, above all, the surface is modelled so as to
present a continuous rise and fall, not an abrupt succession of ridges
put together, and to suggest the various organs which it covers. Still,
though the growing feeling and desire for rendering nature is manifest
in this work, we notice a struggle in overcoming the difficulties presented
by the material. The traces of conventionality are but very slight in
this third statue, the Choiseul-Gouffier Pugilist (PI. xv.), formerly known
as an Apollo. This work is most probably the work of Pythagoras of
Rhegion, a sculptor who stood on the very border line between
dying archaism and the vigorous life of free naturalistic art. Here
freedom is given to the attitude (a typical one in a certain stage
26—2
APPENDIX.
403
action. It is here that the systematic training of each organ of the
human body brought home to them the plastic anatomy of man, and
that in the a-KLa^a-^ia, in which the various stages of each game were
gone through, the sculptor had impressed upon his eye in living statues
the typical attitudes of each game.
A still more direct proof is to be found in the fact that in this period
the custom arose of commemorating athletic victories by statues. And
now, as I have said above, the sculptor is brought face to face with man,
and must bend his art and craft to the service of actual nature.
According to Pausanias the first statues set up to athletic victors
were those of Praxidamas and of Rhexibios, who were victors in
the fifty-ninth and sixty-first Olympiads, that is, about 530 B.C. They
were of wood, and, according to his description of the one to Arrhachion,
were very similar to the statue of the Apollo of Tenea. The influence
of the palaestra and the introduction of the custom of erecting statues to
victors did not take immediate effect, or at once convert imperfect art
to a state of perfection, but it was inch by inch that conventionality
strove to maintain its ground, and step by step that art advanced
towards nature within this comparatively short period of fifty years. So
we can see in the extant statues the gradual growth of freedom and the
falling away of the archaic fetters. In these three instances we have the
chief stages of this progress. In the Apollo of Tenea at Munich, in
attitude, in the composition of the parts of the body and in the
modelling of the surface, we have hardness and woodenness far removed
from the actual appearance of the living organism. In the so-called
"Strangford Apollo," in the British Museum, in whom I see an athlete
belonging to the school of Aegina, we have a great advance in the
direction of nature. Though the attitude is still conventional, the feet
placed one before the other, the arms pinned to the sides, the head
straight forward at right angles to the chest, the limbs seem joined more
organically to the body, and, above all, the surface is modelled so as to
present a continuous rise and fall, not an abrupt succession of ridges
put together, and to suggest the various organs which it covers. Still,
though the growing feeling and desire for rendering nature is manifest
in this work, we notice a struggle in overcoming the difficulties presented
by the material. The traces of conventionality are but very slight in
this third statue, the Choiseul-Gouffier Pugilist (PI. xv.), formerly known
as an Apollo. This work is most probably the work of Pythagoras of
Rhegion, a sculptor who stood on the very border line between
dying archaism and the vigorous life of free naturalistic art. Here
freedom is given to the attitude (a typical one in a certain stage
26—2