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
represent a nude youth standing with the weight of the body on the
right leg, the left drawn back and outwards. The head is turned to
the left, the right arm is held close to the side (the hand, perhaps,
once holding a fillet), and the left forearm is outstretched from the
elbow and holds an aryballos in the hand. The two works are manifestly
Polykleitan in style—the body, head, and hair treatment resembling that
of the _Doryphoros_. He assumed that the feet corresponded in scale
with the footmarks on the Olympia base.
Helbig, in the first edition of his _Fuehrer_, recognized the kinship
between the Vatican statuette and the _Doryphoros_ of Polykleitos,
and was prone to accept Furtwaengler’s identification; but later
on, in the third edition, he ascribed the statuette only to the
Polykleitan circle and denied that its foot position corresponded
with that of the Pythokles base. Amelung also, while accepting its
Polykleitan character, has shown that the feet of the statuette are
closer together than those on the Olympia base and are placed at a
slightly different angle. As for the Munich statue, both Helbig and
Amelung have ruled it out of the evidence. The head, though similar
to that of the statuette, also discloses marked differences, and the
legs of the two works do not have the same pose. Loewy agrees with
Amelung that the statue of Pythokles conformed with the type of the
_Diadoumenos_—especially with the Vaison copy (see Fig. 28)—and with
that of the _Doryphoros_.[1511] We can not, therefore, safely assume
that the statue of Pythokles has been recovered in any existing
copy.[1512] A further variant of the works just discussed should be
mentioned here—the beautiful marble statue of a boy victor in Dresden,
known as the _Dresden Boy_ (Fig. 45).[1513] In this statue the leg
position is nearly like that indicated by the marks on the Pythokles
basis, though the left foot is not set so far back nor its tip so far
out. The head is turned to the left and slightly lowered, the right
arm hung to the side, and the left forearm was outstretched, the hand
doubtless holding some athletic article, at which the boy is looking
down, perhaps a diskos[1514] or a fillet. This beautiful athlete
statue has many stylistic points in common with the _Diadoumenos_, and
shows similar Attic influence, and its original may be referred with
Furtwaengler to the later period of the master himself. It gives us an
excellent idea how Polykleitos may have made his Olympia boy victors
appear. A more remote variant seems to be furnished by a fourth-century
B. C. bronze statuette of a youthful athlete in the Louvre.[1515] Here
the position of the feet, the turn of the head, and the direction of
the gaze are the same as in the _Dresden Boy_. However, as the right
arm is raised horizontally, Furtwaengler believed that the right hand
held a fillet which the youth is letting fall into the palm of the left.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account