United States or Togo ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
One of these obviously allied works can be identified with a statue by Polyclitus known to us from our literary sources. It is the so- called Diadumenos, a youth binding the fillet of victory about his head. This exists in several copies, the best of which has been recently found on the island of Delos and is not yet published.
For while he has made the human form more graceful than nature reveals it, he does not seem to have been able to present the dignity of the gods. Indeed, he is said in his art to have avoided representing mature age, and never to have ventured beyond unfurrowed cheeks. "But what Polyclitus lacked is ascribed to Phidias and Alcamenes.
Xenophanes said, "if the ox or the elephant understood either sculpture or painting, they would not fail to represent the divinity under their own peculiar figure that in this, they would have as much reason as Polyclitus or Phidias, who gave him the human form."
Turning now from Athens to Argos, which, though politically weak, was artistically the rival of Athens in importance, we find Polyclitus the dominant master there, as Phidias was in the other city. Polyclitus survived Phidias and may have been the younger of the two.
An interesting statue of a different order, very often attributed to Polyclitus, may with less of confidence be accepted as his. It is the figure of an Amazon, who has been wounded in the right breast. She leans upon a support at her left side and raises her right hand to her head in an attitude perhaps intended to suggest exhaustion, yet hardly suitable to the position of the wound.
The head of the Doryphorus, as seen from the side, is more nearly rectangular than the usual Attic heads of the period, e.g., in the Parthenon frieze. A strong likeness to the Doryphorus exists in a whole series of youthful athletes, which are therefore with probability traced to Polyclitus as their author or inspirer.
His symmetrical figure, which looks slender in comparison with the Doryphorus of Polyclitus, is athletic without exaggeration, and is modeled with faultless skill. The attitude, with the weight supported chiefly by the right leg and left arm, gives to the body a graceful curve which Praxiteles loved. It is the last stage in the long development of an easy standing pose.
She was represented as the bride of Zeus, who annually renewed her maidenhood at the great Argive festival of the divine marriage; and we cannot doubt that Polyclitus expressed in this statue, which was hardly less famous than the masterpieces of Phidias, all the essential features of the great religious ideals that underlay this primitive rite.
"The same difference is also found in sculpture. Kalon and Hegesias worked in a severe style, like that of the Etruscans; Kalamis was less austere; Myron more delicate still. "Polyclitus possessed diligence and elegance above all others. By many the palm is assigned to him; but that some fault might be ascribed to him, it was said that he lacked dignity.
Oh, thank you for helping me to it: yes, I mean Polyclitus." It follows, then, that the nearer approach a speaker makes to the rules of just composition, the more perfect will he be in his art; always supposing, however, that he has his due share of time allowed him; for, if he be limited of that article, no blame can justly be fixed upon the advocate, though much certainly upon the judge.
Word Of The Day