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
The typical scheme for archaic and archaistic art was to represent the
runner with one knee nearly touching the ground, the upper log forming
a right angle with the lower, the other leg being perpendicular to the
upper. This scheme appears on many vases and reliefs and in statuettes
and statues.[1418] This old method of depicting runners was kept up
by vase-painters down to the time of the red-figured masters.[1419]
We see them on many reliefs, _e. g._, on the Ionic-Greek reliefs on
the three archaic bronze tripods of the middle of the sixth century
B. C. in the possession of Mr. James Loeb;[1420] on a small bronze
relief in the Metropolitan Museum in New York which represents a
winged Boreas;[1421] and on the marble funerary stele of the so-called
dying hoplite runner found in 1902 near the Theseion, and now in the
National Museum in Athens.[1422] Almost the same position as that of
the figure on this Athenian relief is seen in a small bronze in the
Metropolitan Museum, whose primitive features and solidly massed hair
date it in the early part of the sixth century B. C.[1423] Another
slightly larger bronze in the same museum represents Herakles running
in a kneeling posture.[1424] Because a spearman is incongruous behind
a bowman, Kalkmann[1425] and Furtwaengler[1426] have interpreted the
two kneeling figures near either end of the West gable of the temple on
Aegina as archaic runners (see Fig. 21, left). We may further compare
with these figures the positions, though not the motives, of two others
from the West gable at Olympia,[1427] as well as that of the kneeling
bowman _Herakles_ from the East gable of the temple on Aegina.[1428] In
this connection we shall also mention the life-size marble torso of
a kneeling youth found in Nero’s villa at Subiaco in 1884 and now in
the Museo delle Terme, Rome (Pl. 24).[1429] This statue, representing
a boy of delicate build apparently striding forward with the right leg
and bending the left so that the knee nearly touches the ground, has
been regarded by some scholars[1430] as a runner, whose pose copies
the archaic manner, being historically the last example known of its
use in sculpture. The right shoulder is turned backward and the head,
now missing, was turned back and upwards; the right arm is raised high
and twisted about with the palm of the hand facing backward, the left
arm extended with its hand in some way related to the right knee. The
impression made on the spectator is that of a boy bending aside as if
to ward off some danger. It is an excellent piece of work, evidently
the marble copy of an original bronze. This has been variously
assigned to the fifth, fourth, and even later centuries B. C.,[1431]
and interpreted in various ways[1432]—as a Niobid,[1433] as Ganymedes
swooped down upon by the eagle,[1434] as Hylas drawn into the water by
nymphs when he was filling his pitcher,[1435] as a ball-player,[1436]
as a boy throwing a lasso,[1437] as a gable figure,[1438] as a runner
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