With the Borghese Fighter and the Jason we may class, perhaps, a work
like the Actaeon torso in the Louvre,[73] and also that much discussed
and very beautiful work, the Subiaco Youth.[74] This shows the same
restraint in torso modelling which distinguished the Praying Boy and
the Resting Hermes, but in the strain of its attitude it resembles
rather the Fighter of Agasias, especially in the twist of the body
above the waist, which Lysippos had originated and which his pupils
tend to exaggerate. One of the disquieting features of the Borghese
Fighter is that he implies the presence of another figure which is not
there. He is a fighter without an opponent. The Subiaco Boy is in the
same plight. His attitude can hardly be other than that of a suppliant
touching chin and knee of his enemy in Greek fashion. His artistic
defect is that he again is a suppliant without an enemy, part of a
group without his counterpart. In their anxiety to study the human
figure in all positions the Rhodian artists were apt to overlook the
question of artistic unity.
[Illustration: 29]
[Illustration: 30]
Two fine bronzes in the Terme Museum may be attributed with some
certainty to Rhodian artists, in view of the Rhodian monopoly of
Hellenistic bronze casting. Both are Greek originals--the seated
boxer[75] and the hero resting on a lance (Fig. 29). The latter is
commonly called a portrait of some Hellenistic prince, but the absence
of the royal tiara or any personal indications is significant rather of
a heroic type. The face is strongly individual, but so is that of the
Boxer, the Fighter of Agasias, and even the Jason. We have no reason to
see a portrait in any of them, but personality is beginning to affect
even ideal statues in the Hellenistic age. The hero with the lance
is a fine, if rather histrionic, figure more or less following the
Lysippic type of Alexander with the lance[76] and showing a somewhat
massive and emphatic rendering of a Lysippic type. He belongs to the
later Rhodian school, into which exaggeration has crept, rather than to
the more restrained art of the third century. The Boxer, on the other
hand, brutal and coarse as his expression is, has no trace of muscular
exaggeration, and is an earlier work. His broken nose, swollen ears,
scarred face, and blood-bespattered hair show the unsparing realism of
the artist. He is another instance of the all-round statue of the late
Lysippic school, a masterpiece of technique, if a somewhat disagreeable
work of art.
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