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
Since the discovery of these groups by an international party of
Englishmen and Germans in 1811, and their restoration soon after their
arrival in Munich by the sculptor Thorwaldsen, many new fragments
have been discovered by Furtwaengler during his excavations of
the temple site in 1901, and have been incorporated into the
existing figures in the Glyptothek. His reconstruction, though not
definitive, is more in accord with artistic probability than any that
preceded.[962] As we should expect from the athletic tradition of the
Aeginetan school of sculpture just outlined, these sculptures represent
finely trained nude athletes, whose modeling shows great observation of
nature, especially in the treatment of muscles and veins. In fact it
has been truly said that anatomical knowledge was never expressed again
in Greek art so simply and naturally. The figures, without any excess
of flesh, are slightly under life-size, short and stocky—shoulders
square, but the waists slender and the legs long in proportion to the
bodies—and withal are very compact and full of strength. The figures
of the two pediments differ slightly, the eastern being more developed
than the western. Brunn, long ago, arguing from the stele of Aristion,
which then was the best example extant of archaic Attic art, showed
how that art was characterized by grace and dignity of effect, while
Aeginetan art was characterized by a finer study of nature. This
generalization is no longer a matter of inference, but of knowledge.
[Illustration: FIG. 21.—Two Figures, from the West Pediment of the
Temple on Aegina. Glyptothek, Munich.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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