The Glory That Was Greece: a survey of Hellenic culture and civilisationStobart, J. C. (John Clarke)
History
The Glory That Was Greece: a survey of Hellenic culture and civilisation
Stobart, J. C. (John Clarke)
Art, Greek; Greece -- Civilization -- To 146 B.C.
We have many fine works of the fourth century of unknown authorship.
Foremost of all--surely one of the six greatest statues in the
world[90]--is the Demeter of Cnidos, in the British Museum, a statue so
instinct with the spirit of Greek tragedy that but for certain technical
points it ought to belong to the fifth century.[91] This is Mother
Earth, Our Lady of Sorrows, mourning with sad eyes, but not in despair,
for her daughter Persephone. The influence of Praxiteles may be traced
in her brow and lips. The workmanship of this statue, as being, with the
exception of temple reliefs, the finest Greek original in our Museum,
deserves careful study. Very beautiful also is that sculptured drum from
one of the thirty-six columns of the great temple of “Diana of the
Ephesians,” another of the treasures of our Museum.[92] It is scarcely
probable that time should have spared the one column which Scopas
himself designed, but we may trace some of his influence in the
emotional character of the faces, and much of Praxiteles in the grace of
the attitudes and the poetry of the concept. The application of relief
to a rounded surface is in itself a work of great difficulty, and we
have seen how boldly it had been attempted in the same temple by artists
of a much earlier day. This is a funeral scene such as might be
represented on an Attic tombstone. In the centre is a matronly figure,
headless, alas! fastening her mantle on her shoulder preparatory to the
journey; on her left is Hermes, very young and boyish, extending his
caduceus as if pointing downwards, but looking upwards to a point above
the woman’s head. On her right is another figure, whom from his long
wings and boyish form we should take, perhaps, for Love, were it not
that his sad eyes and heavy sword mark him out as Death--a beautiful
conception found also on the new Ludovisi relief and on some of the
Athenian lecythi. Some think that the woman is Alcestis, and it is
scarcely likely that any but a heroine, at the least, would occupy such
a place in such a building. To make both these emissaries of death so
young and charming is an idea typical of the fourth century, and
especially of Praxiteles.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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