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
Though differing in detail, the rendering of the hair, common to
all the replicas, is a purely athletic coiffure. The argument for
attributing the original to Apollo, based on the curls around the
face, is of no importance, since a similar coiffure appears on many
ephebe heads by various Attic masters of the same or a slightly
earlier period. The hair treatment on a little-known replica of the
head in the British Museum[758] gives us an additional argument in
determining whether the original was an Apollo or not. On this head
there are two corkscrew curls side by side just back of the ears,
which are so inorganically attached and so unsuited to the style
of head as to make us believe that they were added by the copyist,
even if their absence in other copies were not proof enough of this
fact. Apparently the copyist adopted a well-known type of athlete and
tried to convert it into an Apollo by the use of this Apolline hair
attribute. The only other Apolline attribute, the quiver on the copies
in the Palazzo Torlonia[759] and Museo delle Terme, may have been
added as a fortuitous adjunct by the copyists, who were converting an
original athlete statue into one of Apollo. It may be added, also,
that the quiver does not always indicate the god, as we shall see
in discussing the Delian _Diadoumenos_ (Pl. 18). When we consider,
therefore, the athletic pose, the massive outline and proportions, the
high-arched chest, the muscular arms and thighs, the accentuation of
the veins,[760] the fashion of the hair, and the relatively small size
of the head, together with the presence of the boxing-thongs on the
London example, it seems reasonable to conclude that in this series of
copies we may see an original athlete statue, which in certain cases
was later transformed into statues of Apollo. Even if the original
was actually an Apollo, its proportions were far better suited to the
patron of athletic exercises than to the leader of a celestial choir.
An instance of the similar use of the same type of head is shown by
the colossal statue of Apollo unearthed at Olympia.[761] Here we see
the same coiffure as in the heads discussed, but the presence of the
remnants of a lyre indubitably shows that this copy was intended for
Apollo, and so it has been rightly assigned by Treu, not to the fifth,
but to a later century. When long hair was no longer the fashion for
athletes, a later artist might mistakenly think that the earlier plaits
were genuinely Apolline, though we know that they were common to all
early athletic art. Another head in the British Museum has been ably
discussed by Mrs. Strong,[762] who shows that it comes from an Apollo
and not from an athlete statue. It is similar to an Apollo pictured on
a stater struck at Mytilene about 400 B. C.,[763] and consequently,
like the statue from Olympia, it is merely an instance of the process
of converting an athlete statue into that of an Apollo.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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