In Greece at all times professions tended to run in one family, and
we have already seen examples of families of sculptors, such as
that of Praxiteles, in which the craft was handed down from father
to son for generations. The Hellenistic age is full of evidence for
this phenomenon in Athens and elsewhere. Rhodes in particular gives
us detailed families of sculptors, since we are better provided
with inscriptions in Rhodes than in other centres. In Hellenistic
Athens two such families are worthy of notice. Polykles, whom we
may call Polykles I, had two sons, Timokles and Timarchides I; the
latter had two sons, Polykles II and Dionysios; and Polykles II had
a son, Timarchides II. These are known to us from literature or from
inscriptions, and they cover more or less the second century B.C. It
is a question to which member of the house we are to ascribe the very
famous bronze Hermaphrodite mentioned by Pliny,[91] or whether it
should be referred to an earlier artist of the same name in the fourth
century.[92] A further question is involved in the identification of
the Hermaphrodite, since it is commonly assumed that the Sleeping
Hermaphrodite (Fig. 42), far the most famous type now extant in
numerous copies, must have had a marble and not a bronze original. The
statue of Polykles is identified with the Berlin Hermaphrodite[93]
by those who would give him a fourth-century date; with a bronze in
Epinal[94] by those who associate him with Hellenistic art. The Berlin
Hermaphrodite is of Praxitelean type; the Epinal bronze resembles
rather what we have called the Pergamene type of the Turning Satyr and
the Aphrodite Kallipygos. The question is a difficult one, but we may
safely exclude Polykles II. Timarchides I, his father, and Dionysios,
his brother, worked on statues of a marked academic tendency. The C.
Ofellius of Delos was the work of his brother, a statue of purely
mechanical taste. This Polykles is not likely to have originated a
great and famous statue. Polykles I worked as early as 200, a much
better period for original work. He is a more likely candidate for the
authorship of the type, if we suppose it to have resembled either the
Epinal bronze or the Sleeping Hermaphrodite. On _a priori_ grounds
of its great popularity one would distinctly prefer to connect the
latter with the statue mentioned by Pliny. It is true that it looks
like a marble statue and not a bronze one, but a marble replica which
served as the prototype for marble copies is by no means an impossible
suggestion. But this Sleeping Hermaphrodite is a work of distinctly
Pergamene tendency, intended to bring out the artist’s skill in the
rendering of soft sensual forms. It would seem to belong to an earlier
date than 200 or even 250. The Epinal bronze implies a similar date,
and therefore we are left with a double difficulty. The best Polykles
for our purpose seems to be fifty years too late for either of the
types we require.
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