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
If in these later years our knowledge of Skopas has been greatly
augmented by the discovery of the Tegea heads (Fig. 73), that of
Lysippos has been almost revolutionized. With the discovery in
1894 at Delphi of the group of statues dedicated by the Thessalian
Daochos[2023] in honor of various members of his house, whose dates
covered nearly two centuries,[2024] an entirely new impetus was
given to the study of the last of the great Greek sculptors. Homolle
immediately recognized the fourth-century origin of the group, and at
first pronounced the statue of Agias Lysippan;[2025] later he saw in
the types, poses, and proportions of the group the mixed influences
of Praxiteles, Skopas, and Lysippos, but referred the _Agias_ to the
school of Skopas,[2026] while still later he again pronounced it
Lysippan.[2027] But its true character was not destined to be long
in doubt. When Erich Preuner[2028] found almost the same metrical
inscription, which was on the base of the best preserved statue of
the group, that of Agias (Pl. 28 and Fig. 68),[2029] in the traveling
journal of Stackelberg,[2030] copied from a base in Pharsalos, the
Thessalian home of Daochos, with the additional information that
Lysippos of Sikyon made the statue, our views of the work of that
artist had to undergo a thorough revision. For this discovery brought
the _Agias_—if not the others of the group—into direct relation to
Lysippos by documentary evidence, while the easily recognized Lysippan
characteristics of the statue—the slender body and limbs, the small
head, the proportions and pose—confirmed this connection on stylistic
grounds. It became clear that Daochos had set up a series of statues
in honor of his ancestors both at Pharsalos and Delphi. Whether the
Thessalian group was of bronze, as is generally held, owing to the
widespread belief that Lysippos worked only in metal, and the Delphian
group was composed of contemporary marble copies of those originals,
will be discussed further on. If the marble group was a copy, we may
infer that it reproduced the original statues, not mechanically and
laboriously as was often the case in Roman days, but accurately; for
having employed a noted artist in the one case, the dedicator would
have desired an accurate reproduction of the work in the other.
[Illustration: PLATE 28
Statue of the Pancratiast Agias, from Delphi. Museum of Delphi.]
[Illustration: FIG. 68.—Head from the Statue of Agias (Pl. 28). Museum
of Delphi.]
THE APOXYOMENOS OF THE VATICAN, AND LYSIPPOS.
[Illustration: PLATE 29
Statue of the _Apoxyomenos_, after Lysippos or his School. Vatican
Museum, Rome.]
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