Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic ArtHyde, Walter Woodburn
History
Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art
Hyde, Walter Woodburn
Olympics; Sculpture, Greek; Sports -- Greece
None of the works of Hagelaïdas at Olympia or elsewhere is known.
Messenian coins of the fourth century B. C. show the motives of two of
his statues, that of his _Zeus Ithomatas_ just mentioned as being made
for the Messenians,[877] and the beardless _Zeus_ παῖς at Aigion.[878]
However, we infer the characteristics of his style from the bronze
statuette in Berlin which was found at Ligourió near Epidauros (Fig.
16).[879] This is undoubtedly an Argive work contemporary with the
later period of Hagelaïdas. Furtwaengler and Frost are right in looking
upon it as showing the prototype of the canon of Polykleitos. Though
too small to count as a characteristic work of the early Argive school,
it shows us that the style of that school was a short and stocky type,
similar to Aeginetan works, only somewhat fleshier and heavier. The
straight mouth and heavy chin, the treatment of the eyelids, and the
clumsy limbs are all archaic features to be expected in the period
preceding Polykleitos. The modeling is carefully executed, showing a
knowledge of anatomy. If such excellence is found in a statuette, we
can form some idea of the perfection of a statue by the master.
[Illustration: FIG. 16.—Bronze Statuette, from Ligourió. Museum of
Berlin.]
[Illustration: PLATE 9
Statue of an Athlete, by Stephanos. Villa Albani, Rome.]
The bronze _Apollo_ from Pompeii now in the Naples Museum,[880] with
marble replicas in Mantua and Paris,[881] shows us how Hagelaïdas
treated a god type, while the statue of an athlete by Stephanos will
give us some idea of how he treated his victor statues, as it seems
to have been modeled after an athlete statue of the early fifth
century B. C., perhaps after a work by some pupil of the master.
Stephanos belonged to the school of Pasiteles, a group of sculptors
flourishing at Rome at the end of the Republic and the beginning of
the Empire. They devoted themselves to the reproduction of early
fifth-century statues. They were not ordinary copyists, for their works
show individual mannerisms and a system of proportions foreign to the
originals. Thus their statues have the square shoulders of the Argive
school, but the slim bodies and slender legs of the period of Lysippos
and his scholars. Apart from such mannerisms, then, in the male figure
signed _Stephanos, pupil of Pasiteles_, in the Villa Albani in Rome
(Pl. 9),[882] which reappears in a very similar statue in groups
combined with a female figure of related style,[883] or with another
male figure,[884] we may see a copy of a bronze original of the Argive
school before Polykleitos. The standing motive and the body forms
are the same in both the Mantuan _Apollo_ and the Stephanos figure,
although the former is more developed and the head type is different in
both; this shows that the two, while displaying the same basic ideal,
were not works of the same master.[885] As the statue by Stephanos has
a fillet around the hair, it may well represent an ideal athlete, who
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