The first half of the third century was a period of very good work in
portraiture, which is, however, a subject by itself. The Demosthenes
of Polyeuctes is dated about 280 B.C., and the statues of Aeschines,
Aristotle, and others show the existence of an admirable school of
portrait sculptors at this time in Athens. But ideal sculpture shows
a sad falling-off. The Themis of Chairestratos (Fig. 40) belongs
approximately to this period, and it is marked by a great formality,
not only in pose but in the treatment of hair and drapery. The
classical period of sculpture in Athens was followed by what we must
call an academic period. The foreign schools were developing on lines
of naturalism, but at home sculptors tended merely to formalize
the work of the fourth-century masters, and to produce statues of
mechanical correctness without any vitality at all. We have seen the
beginning of this tendency in the drapery system of the followers of
Praxiteles. It now affects the whole of Attic sculpture. Old types
are adopted again and again, until they become purely mechanical.
Drapery styles are similarly used up, and the increasing formality of
every department stifles entirely the possibilities of originality.
The Hermes of Andros (Fig. 39) is a good example of this kind of
crystallization of types. The statue was found in connexion with a
tomb, and it is clearly a memorial statue. Its companion was a female
figure reproducing exactly the pose and drapery of the draped
female figure from Herculaneum at Dresden. The date would seem to be
late third century. The Hermes itself is a replica of a type known in
the Antinous of the Belvedere and other statues, and is a product of
the Praxitelean school, like the Dresden figure. But the influence
of Praxiteles is not alone in it. We have a clear use of Lysippic
proportions and some Lysippic influence in the head. This eclecticism
is an invariable mark of archaistic art. The sculptor, who has no new
message of his own to deliver, looks back to antiquity for his types,
but does not imitate one statue directly. The only form of originality
which he is able to use is originality of combination and selection.
Consequently he absorbs details from several artists and produces
work which we label Lysippo-Scopaic, or Lysippo-Praxitelean, &c. We
have seen how the late fourth-century artists in Asia Minor combined
characteristics of Scopas and Praxiteles. The late fourth-century
and third-century Attic artists made use of all their predecessors,
and produced statues in which we can detect the _disiecta membra_ of
half a dozen styles. At the same time we may recognize the general
predominance of Praxitelean tradition over that of the other artists
and a universal predilection for marble instead of bronze.
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