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Updated: May 13, 2025
The only other artist of this school that we will refer to is Praxit'eles, a contemporary of Scopas. He excelled in representing the female figure, his masterpiece being the Cnid'ian Aphrodi'te, a naked statue, in Parian marble, modeled from life, representing Venus just leaving the bath. This statue was afterward taken to Constantinople, where it was burned during the reign of Justinian.
But at length, when Antiochus had beaten Ptolemy, he seized upon Judea; and when Philopater was dead, his son sent out a great army under Scopas, the general of his forces, against the inhabitants of Celesyria, who took many of their cities, and in particular our nation; which when he fell upon them, went over to him.
On one occasion, when residing at the court of Scopas, king of Thessaly, the prince desired him to prepare a poem in celebration of his exploits, to be recited at a banquet. In order to diversify his theme, Simonides, who was celebrated for his piety, introduced into his poem the exploits of Castor and Pollux.
Of this order, the most famous temple in Greece was that of Minerva at Tegea, built by Scopas of Paros, but destroyed by fire four hundred years before Christ. Nothing more distinguished Greek architecture than the variety, the grace, and the beauty of the mouldings, generally in eccentric curves.
The Niobe group shows the distinction between Scopas and Praxiteles and the earlier artists in choice of subject and mode of treatment. The same distinction is shown by the Raging Bacchante of Scopas. The head is thrown back, the hair loosened, the garments floating in the wind, an ecstacy of wild, torrent- like action.
The gds of Praxiteles are the gods of human experience, and in his treatment of them he does not always escape the tendency of the age of decline to put pathos and passion in the place of eternal majesty. The influence of Scopas and Praxiteles continued to be felt through a number of artists who worked in sufficient harmony with them to be properly called of their school.
In a little time he received a message that two young men on horseback were waiting without and anxious to see him. Simonides hastened to the door, but looked in vain for the visitors. Scarcely however had he left the banqueting-hall when the roof fell in with a loud crash, burying Scopas and all his guests beneath the ruins.
The Eros of Praxiteles and the Athênê of Scopas, like the Cena of Leonardo and the Martyr of Titian, are beyond our reach, and with all our industry we shall hardly recover the ninety tragedies of Aeschylus.
There are others, more moderate but less logical, who would teach us that in uniting with the antique, the mediæval art of the fifteenth century purified and sanctified the beautiful but evil child of Paganism; that the goddess of Scopas and the athlete of Polyclete were raised to a higher sphere when Raphael changed the one into a Madonna, and Michael Angelo metamorphosed the other into a prophet.
I will set down presently the epistles themselves which he wrote to the generals concerning them, but will first produce the testimony of Polybius of Megalopolis; for thus does he speak, in the sixteenth book of his history: "Now Scopas, the general of Ptolemy's army, went in haste to the superior parts of the country, and in the winter time overthrew the nation of the Jews?"
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