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
7B), as copies of
an original athlete statue, is, as we have shown in the second chapter,
well-founded, since the muscular build and the coiffure of these
statues betoken the athlete. But his further attempt to show that the
original was by Pythagoras, and his identifying it with the statue of
the boxer Euthymos at Olympia, is not so reasonable.[1317]
[Illustration: FIG. 33.—Head of an Athlete, from Perinthos. Albertinum,
Dresden.]
The attempt to ascribe the head of a pancratiast from Perinthos in
Dresden (Fig. 33)[1318] to Pythagoras is not convincing, though
Furtwaengler has included it in his provisional Pythagorean
group,[1319] as he does the boxer in the Louvre known as _Pollux_
(Fig. 58),[1320] the athlete of the Boboli Gardens in Florence formerly
called _Harmodios_ by Benndorf,[1321] and the statue of an athlete of
later style in Lansdowne House, London.[1322] Other scholars have also
connected the Perinthos head with Pythagoras.[1323] Hermann brought it
into relation with the bust in the Riccardi Palace in Florence, which,
despite its swollen ears, we have already classed as representing
a hero and not an athlete, because of the garment thrown over the
shoulder.[1324] Furtwaengler tried to show that this bust was Myronian
in style, classing it and the head of an athlete in Ince Blundell Hall,
Lancashire, England,[1325] along with that of the earlier _Diskobolos_,
explaining the acknowledged differences in the three by Pliny’s
statement that Myron _primus multiplicasse veritatem videtur_.[1326]
Arndt lists the Perinthos, Riccardi, and Ince Blundell heads, together
with two others in the Jakobsen collection in Copenhagen,[1327]
the head of the so-called Pollux of the Louvre, a bearded head in
Petrograd,[1328] and the so-called head of _Peisistratos_ in the
Villa Albani, Rome,[1329] as works emanating from one school of
sculptors—the differences being explained by the many copyists. But
to attempt to differentiate within the group two different sculptors,
Myron or Pythagoras, he finds impossible, chiefly because we are
dealing in every case with copies and not with originals, and because
in no case are we certain that the head belongs to the torso on which
it is set.[1330] Still another critic, A. Schober, classes together
as more or less related works the Riccardi, Ince Blundell, Perinthos,
and Ny-Carlsberg heads, the Louvre boxer (_Pollux_), Chinnery
_Hermes_ in the British Museum,[1331] the Boboli athlete, the athlete
metamorphosed into a _Hermes_ in the Loggia Scoperta of the Vatican,
and the Lansdowne athlete, and finds them all Myronian. He believes the
Perinthos head to be the prototype of the Riccardi and Ince Blundell
heads.[1332]
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