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
_Apollo-on-the-Omphalos_ in Athens (Pl. 7B);[1258] the athlete head
from Perinthos (Fig. 33);[1259] the bronze copy of the head of the
_Doryphoros_, found in Herculaneum and now in Naples, by the Attic
artist Apollonios (Fig. 47);[1260] the Ince-Blundell head in England,
to be discussed; four heads in Copenhagen;[1261] the remarkably
beautiful bust of an athlete in the Metropolitan Museum, New York (Pl.
20), whose rounded skull, oval face, projecting lower forehead, and
dreamy, half-closed eyes place it in the fourth century B. C., a work
influenced by the art of Praxiteles.[1262]
[Illustration: PLATE 20
Head of an Athlete, School of Praxiteles. Metropolitan Museum, New
York.]
When we consider heads of gods and heroes we find the swollen ears on
a variety of types. We see them on the so-called _Borghese Warrior_ of
the Louvre (Fig. 43),[1263] formerly called a _Gladiator_, and on the
marble statue of Kresilæan style in Munich, which has been known since
Brunn’s interpretation as _Diomedes_ (carrying off the Palladion from
Troy) (Pl. 21).[1264] This latter statue is a careful, though inexact,
Hadrianic copy of a famous work and is shown to represent the hero, and
not an athlete, by the mantle thrown over the arm. Skill in the boxing
match, the roughest and most dangerous of sports, is as appropriate
to _Diomedes_ as to Herakles himself. The crushed ears appear on the
Dresden replica of this statue, a cast from the Mengs collection, the
original of which was once probably in England,[1265] but do not appear
on the poor copy in the Louvre.[1266] They also appear on the Myronian
bust in the Riccardi Palace, Florence, which is a copy of an original
that was, perhaps, the forerunner of the Kresilæan _Diomedes_.[1267]
Here again the garment thrown over the left shoulder shows that a
youthful hero, and not an athlete, is intended.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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