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
Pausanias mentions the monuments of several victors at Olympia who
were entitled to portrait statues on the strength of Pliny’s rule,
though we have no indication that they were so honored. Thus he
mentions the statues of Dikon,[510] Sostratos,[511] Philinos,[512]
and Gorgos.[513] The early fifth-century boxer Euthymos[514] also won
three victories, but at a time before we should expect a portrait
statue. The Periegete also mentions several victors who won three or
more times, though he does not say that they had any statues, portrait
or otherwise.[515] Percy Gardner[516] has shown how erroneous is the
prevailing view that the Greeks neglected portraiture in their art and
left it for the Romans to develop. He shows that Greek artists of the
third and second centuries B. C. left a great many portraits of the
highest artistic value and that portraits of Romans before the time
of Augustus, and the best Roman examples during the Empire, were made
by Greek sculptors. The number of Greek portraits in our museums,
especially in Rome, is very great.[517] From archaic times down to the
middle of the fifth century B. C. we should not expect portraiture. In
the earlier period, therefore, it is difficult to distinguish between
statues of gods and those of men. In the great period of Greek art,
from the time of Perikles on to that of Alexander, the general tendency
of Greek sculpture was so ideal that portraits, when they existed,
seem impersonal. The later copyists of portraits also idealized them.
Thus Pliny, in speaking of Kresilas’ portrait of Perikles, says that
this artist _nobiles viros nobiliores fecit_—in other words, that
he idealized them.[518] The portraits of Alexander were especially
idealized. In the first half of the fourth century we first hear of
realistic portraiture. Thus Demetrios, who flourished 380-360 B.
C.,[519] made a “very beautiful” statue of a Corinthian general named
Pelichos, which Lucian[520] says had a fat belly, bald head, hair
floating in the wind, and prominent veins, “like the man himself.”[521]
Except for the hair this description by the satirist seems to have been
correct. At the end of the fourth century B. C. anatomical detail began
to be shown in sculpture. Largely under the influence of Lysippos,
the personality of victors began to be emphasized in figure and face
in a very realistic way. We can distinguish between such portraits of
victors before and after the time of Lysippos.[522] Pliny[523] says
that Lysistratos, the brother of Lysippos, was the first to obtain
portraits by making a plaster mould on the features and so to render
likenesses exactly, as “previous artists had only tried to make them as
beautiful as possible.” In any case, by the time of Lysippos realistic
portraiture began to be emphasized. We see it at Olympia in the later
bronze pancratiast’s head found there (Fig. 61, A and B), and in a
still more revolting style in the _Seated Boxer_ of the Museo delle
Terme (Pl. 16, and Fig. 27).
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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