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
Apart from specifically athletic types, we know that statues in motion,
especially those representing winged figures, antedated the sixth
century B. C. in Greece, and were, perhaps, coeval with the very origin
of Greek art.[1297] We know that the oldest Egyptian art attempted
to render the human body in motion. We may instance the limestone
funerary statuette dating from the Old Kingdom, which represents a slave
woman grinding corn,[1298] and similar figures found in the graves
of Memphis. In fact, the making of such statues ceased in Egyptian
art after the end of the Old Kingdom. While Assyro-Babylonian art
represented figures in motion only on reliefs, Cretan art, as we have
seen in the first chapter, showed the utmost skill in representing
movement in figures in the round. It used to be assumed that in Greek
art motion statues developed out of the archaic “Apollo” type through
the gradual freeing of legs and arms. Any such assumption is easily
disproved by the fact that figures in motion exist, which date back
almost as far as figures at rest. It is equally fallacious to argue
that slight movement was easier for the early artist to represent
than violent movement, for just the contrary was the case, so that
in general the greater the movement represented, the greater is the
age of the given monument. Early vase-paintings show that the early
painter delighted in portraying free movement.[1299] It may be that
the vase-painter preceded the sculptor in portraying movement, for it
was easier to effect this in two dimensions than in three. But that
statues in motion were already known at the beginning of the sixth
century B. C., at least, is shown by the winged flying figure known
as the _Nike_ of Archermos,[1300] unearthed on the island of Delos by
the French in 1877, which is a masterpiece of early Chian sculpture,
perhaps coeval with the statue dedicated to Artemis by Nikandre of
Naxos, found a year later on Delos,[1301] even though the latter
appears more archaic. This earliest example of treating a flying figure
in Greek sculpture we find repeated almost unchanged for a long time
after, especially for _akroteria_ figures on temples and in the minor
arts. We might mention the bronze statuette of the end of the sixth
century B. C., found on the Akropolis, which comes from the edge of a
vessel and represents a winged _Nike_ springing through the air, the
legs in profile and the head and upper body turned to the front, just
as in the figure of Archermos.[1302] Such figures completely disprove
the contention of Sikes that the Greek idea of a winged _Nike_ did
not antedate the fifth century B. C.[1303] The early date of statues
represented in a lunging attitude, like the _Tyrannicides_, is also
shown by the story that Herakles destroyed his own statue by Daidalos
in the agora of Elis, because in the night he mistook it for an enemy
lunging at him. The scheme of combatants fighting with lances seems to
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