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
We have seen[816] that it was a very old custom in Greece to dedicate
statues of victors at the great national games to the god in whose
honor the games were held. On many sites, especially at Olympia, tiny
statuettes of clay or bronze of very primitive technique have been
found in great numbers, which represent victors in many attitudes and
ways—as horsemen, warriors, charioteers, etc. By the sixth century B.
C. this ancient custom, as we learn from literary, epigraphical, and
monumental sources, had developed, with the rapid progress attained by
the sculptor’s art, into the regular practice of erecting life-size
statues of athletes at the site of the games or in the native city
of the victor. Especially at Olympia hundreds of such monuments were
gradually collected, whose numbers and beauty must have exerted an
overwhelming impression on the visitor to the Altis. We shall now begin
the consideration of these monuments in detail.
The victor statues at Olympia, as elsewhere, may be conveniently
divided into two main groups—those which represent the victor as
standing or seated at rest, before or after the contest, and those
which represent him in movement, _i. e._, in some contest schema.[817]
Examples of statues of athletes represented at rest are common in Greek
athletic sculpture. We need only mention the so-called _Oil-pourer_
of Munich (Pl. 11), who is represented as pouring oil over his body
to make his limbs more supple for the coming wrestling bout; the
_Diadoumenos_ of Polykleitos (Pls. 17, 18, and Fig. 28), who is binding
a victor fillet around his head after a successful encounter; the
_Apoxyomenos_ of the school of Lysippos (Pl. 29), representing an
athlete scraping off the oil and dirt from his body after his victory.
In this class of statues, which forms by far the greater number and
shows the richer motives, the poses are quiet and reserved, the figures
are compact, and the expression earnest and even thoughtful. As
examples of statues represented in movement we need only recall such
well-known works as the _Diskobolos_ of Myron with its rhythmic lines
and vivacious expression (Pls. 22, 23, and Figs. 34, 35); the bronze
wrestlers of Naples, who are bending eagerly forward watching for a
grip (Fig. 51); or the artistically intertwined pancratiast group of
Florence (Pl. 25). Such monuments show us the varied poses, the choice
of the critical moment, the truth to life, and the masterly rhythm
attained by certain sculptors.
THE APOLLO TYPE.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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