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
A chalcedony scarab of archaic type in the British Museum represents
a nude athlete with a lekythos slung over the left arm and a strigil
in the left hand, which rests on the hip.[1064] A beautiful marble
grave-relief, much mutilated, in the museum at Delphi,[1065] which
dates from the middle of the fifth century B. C., represents a palæstra
victor, with his arms extended to the right, cleansing himself with a
strigil, which is held in the right hand, while a slave boy, holding
the remnant of an aryballos in his right hand, looks up at him from
the right. The careful anatomy of this relief may point to Pythagoras
of Samos, as its author, though we have no certain work of his, for it
fits the description of that artist by Pliny, who says that he was the
first to express sinews and veins.[1066]
LIBATION-POURING.
[Illustration: PLATE 13
Statue of an Athlete, after Polykleitos. Farnsworth Museum, Wellesley
College, U. S. A.]
[Illustration: FIG. 24.—Bronze Statuette of an Athlete. Louvre, Paris.]
An original Greek bronze statuette in Paris (Fig. 24)[1067] reproduces
the motive of the statue of the boy wrestler Xenokles by the sculptor
Polykleitos Minor at Olympia, as a comparison with the footprints on
the recovered base of the latter shows.[1068] As the forms correspond
with those of the _Doryphoros_ and _Diadoumenos_, and as its execution
is so marvelous, Furtwaengler has ascribed the statuette to the
circle of Polykleitos’ pupils. The position of the right hand, which
has the thumbs drawn in, corresponds with that of the _Idolino_ (Pl.
14), which we are to discuss, and can best be explained by assuming
that it similarly held a kylix; the left hand carried a staff-like
attribute. The head is bent and looks to the right. Furtwaengler
believed that, inasmuch as the act of pouring a libation does not occur
in art or literature as an athletic motive, the statuette represented a
hero or god. Many Roman marble copies show the same motive and preserve
to us a Polykleitan work which corresponds in all essentials with the
Louvre statuette.[1069] We mention two, the only ones of the type in
which the heads are on the trunks, one in the Galleria delle Statue
of the Vatican,[1070] the other in the Farnsworth Museum at Wellesley
College (Pl. 13).[1071] These copies represent a youth standing with
both feet flat upon the ground, the weight of the body resting upon the
right one, while the left is turned a little to the side. He is looking
downwards to the right. Doubtless we should restore these copies after
the Paris bronze, with a kylix in the right hand. The palm-branch
in a similar statue, to be mentioned further on, shows that in all
probability the origin statue was that of an athlete; and that he was
a famous athlete is shown by the number of copies of the torso and
head.[1072] A bronze head from Herculaneum (Fig. 25)[1073] so strongly
resembles in its forms the type under discussion—which Furtwaengler has
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