Religion and Art in Ancient GreeceGardner, Ernest Arthur
Religion
Religion and Art in Ancient Greece
Gardner, Ernest Arthur
Art and religion -- Greece; Art, Greek; Greece -- Religion; Mythology, Classical, in art
This duality was, however, the result of accident rather than the normal
arrangement, and, so long as the primitive image remained the official
object of worship, it was difficult, if not impossible, for the new and
more artistic statue to have its full religious effect. In many cases,
probably in most cases, it was actually substituted, sooner or later,
for the earlier embodiment of the deity. Sometimes the early image,
which was often of wood, may have decayed or been worn away by the
attentions lavished upon it; we hear of a statue of which the hand had
perished under the kisses of the devout. We hear also of cases in which
it had been entirely lost--for instance, the Black Demete of Phigalia,
an uncouth image with a horse's head; here, when a plague had warned the
people to replace it, the AEginetan sculptor Onatas undertook the task;
and he is said to have been vouchsafed a vision in sleep which enabled
him to reproduce exactly this unsightly idol. It would not seem that
such a commission gave much scope to his artistic powers; but it is
noteworthy that the Phigalians employed one of the most famous sculptors
of the day. Elsewhere the conditions were more favourable, and it was
possible for the artist, while conforming to the accepted type, to give
it a more correct form and more pleasing features.
Daedalus, we are told--and in this story Daedalus is an impersonation of
the art of the early sculptors in Greece--made statues of the gods so
life-like that they had to be chained to their pedestals for fear they
should run away. It is likely that this tale goes back to a genuine
tradition; for Pausanias actually saw statues with fetters attached to
them in several early shrines in Greece. The device is natural enough.
Daedalus was a magician as well as a sculptor; and if he could give his
statues eyes that they might see, and ears that they might hear, it was
an obvious inference that if he gave them legs they might run away and
desert their shrines and their worshippers.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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