Praxiteles
Praxiteles (
A supposed relationship between Praxiteles and his beautiful model, the
Some writers have maintained that there were two sculptors of the name Praxiteles. One was a contemporary of
Date
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Smarthistory – After Praxiteles, Venus (Roman Copy)[1] |
Accurate dates for Praxiteles are elusive, but it is likely that he was no longer working in the time of Alexander the Great, in the absence of evidence that Alexander employed Praxiteles, as he probably would have done. Pliny's date, 364 BC, is probably that of one of his most noted works.
The subjects chosen by Praxiteles were either
. He probably invented the S-curve.Praxiteles and his school worked almost entirely in Parian marble. At the time the marble quarries of Paros were at their best; nor could any marble be finer for the purposes of the sculptor than that of which the Hermes from Olympia was fashioned. Some of the statues of Praxiteles were coloured by the painter Nicias, and in the opinion of the sculptor they gained greatly by this treatment.
Hermes and the Infant Dionysus
In 1911, the Encyclopædia Britannica noted that
- Our knowledge of Praxiteles has received a great addition, and has been placed on a satisfactory basis, by the discovery at Olympia in 1877 of his statue of Hermes with the Infant Dionysus, a statue which has become famous throughout the world.[2][a]
Later opinions have varied, reaching a low with the sculptor
The sculpture was located where
Opposing arguments have been made that the statue is a copy by a Roman copyist, perhaps of a work by Praxiteles that the Romans had purloined.
Apollo Sauroktonos
Other works that appear to be copies of Praxiteles' sculpture express the same gracefulness in repose and indefinable charm as the Hermes and the Infant Dionysus. Among the most notable of these are the Apollo Sauroktonos, or the lizard-slayer, which portrays a youth leaning against a tree and idly striking with an arrow at a lizard. Several Roman copies from the 1st century are known including those at the Louvre Museum, the Vatican Museums, and the National Museums Liverpool.
On June 22, 2004, the Cleveland Museum of Art (CMA), announced the acquisition of an ancient bronze sculpture of Apollo Sauroktonos. The work is alleged to be the only near-complete original work by Praxiteles, though the dating and attribution of the sculpture will continue to be studied. The work was to be included in the 2007 Praxiteles exhibition organized by the Louvre Museum in Paris, but pressure from Greece, which disputes the work's provenance and legal ownership, caused the French to exclude it from the show.
Apollo Lykeios
The
Capitoline Satyr
The Resting Satyr of the Capitol at Rome has commonly been regarded as a copy of one of the Satyrs of Praxiteles, but it cannot be identified in the list of his works. Moreover, the style is hard and poor; a far superior replica exists in a torso in the Louvre.[citation needed] The attitude and character of the work are certainly of Praxitelean school.
Leto, Apollo, and Artemis
Excavations at Mantineia in Arcadia have brought to light the base of a group of Leto, Apollo, and Artemis by Praxiteles. This base was doubtless not the work of the great sculptor himself, but of one of his assistants. Nevertheless, it is pleasing and historically valuable. Pausanias (viii. 9, I) thus describes the base, "on the base which supports the statues there are sculptured the Muses and Marsyas playing the flutes (auloi)." Three slabs which have survived represent Apollo; Marsyas; a slave, and six of the Muses, the slab which held the other three having disappeared.
Leconfield Head
The Leconfield Head (a head of the Aphrodite of Cnidus type, included in the 2007 exhibition at the Louvre)[12] in the Red Room, Petworth House, West Sussex, UK, was claimed by Adolf Furtwängler[13] to be an actual work of Praxiteles, based on its style and its intrinsic quality. The Leconfield Head, the keystone of the Greek antiquities at Petworth[14] was probably bought from Gavin Hamilton in Rome in 1755.
Aberdeen Head
The Aberdeen Head, whether of Hermes or of a youthful Heracles, in the British Museum, is linked to Praxiteles by its striking resemblance to the Hermes of Olympia.[15]
Aphrodite of Cnidus
Its renown was such, that it was immortalised in a lyric epigram:
Artemis of Antikyra
According to
Uncertain attributions
Roman copies
Besides these works, associated with Praxiteles by reference to notices in ancient writers, there are numerous copies from the Roman age, statues of Hermes, Dionysus, Aphrodite, Satyrs and Nymphs, and the like, in which a varied expression of Praxitelean style may be discerned.[citation needed]
See also
Footnotes
- ^ "But the figure of the Hermes, full and solid without being fleshy, at once strong and active, is a masterpiece, and the play of surface is astonishing. In the head we have a remarkably rounded and intelligent shape, and the face expresses the perfection of health and enjoyment. This statue must for the future be our best evidence for the style of Praxiteles. It altogether confirms and interprets the statements as to Praxiteles made by Pliny and other ancient critics."[2]
- ^ Attribution to a younger Praxiteles on the basis of the inscription Pergamon VIII, 1, 137 – as first suggested by Morgan (1937).[5] Carpenter (1954) dismissed this younger Praxiteles as a phantom.[6]
- ^ The career of the Olympia Hermes reputation was summed up by Wycherley (1982); his advice was to trust to the judgment of Pausanias in this matter.[9]
References
- ^ "After Praxiteles, Venus (Roman Copy)". Smarthistory at Khan Academy. Archived from the original on March 10, 2014. Retrieved December 18, 2012.
- ^ a b Encyclopædia Britannica, 1911.
- ^ Cladel, J. (1937). Maillol. Sa vie, son œuvre, ses idées. Paris. p. 98.
C'est pompier, c'est affreux, c'est sculpté du savon de Marseille.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Blümel, Carl (1948). Der Hermes eine Praxiteles. Baden-Baden, DE.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - ^ Morgan, C.H. (1937). "The drapery of the Hermes of Praxiteles". Archaiologike Ephemeris: 61–68.
- S2CID 191376162.
- ^ Pausanias. Description of Greece. 5.17.3. refers to the stone sculpture as techne of Praxiteles
- S2CID 162005966.
- JSTOR 1353960.
Studies in Spartan Architecture, Sculpture and Topography. Presented to Ion A. Thompson
- S2CID 191374605.
- ^ Anacharsis (7).
- ^ Illustration of a cast.
- ^ Furtwängler, Meisterwerken der Griechischen Plastik, 1893.
- ^ Margaret Wyndham, Catalogue of the Collection of Greek and Roman Antiquities in the possession of Lord Leconfield (London:Medici Society) 1916.
- ^ "British Museum Highlights". Archived from the original on 2015-10-18. Retrieved 2017-06-15.
- ^ Seaman, Kristen (2004). "Retrieving the Original Aphrodite of Knidos". Atti della Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. Rendiconti Classe di scienze morali, storiche e filologiche. 9. 15 (3): 538–541.
- ^ Rizzo G.-E., Prassitele (Milan – Rome 1932), p. 13. Lacroix L., Les reproductions de statues sur les monnaies grecques (Liége 1949), pp. 309–310; Corso A., Prassitele. Fonti Epigrafiche e letterarie. Vita et opere, vol. 1 (Roma 1988), pp. 182–184. Rolley C., La Sculpture Grecque 2, La période classique (Paris 1999), p. 244.
- ^ Sideris Α., "Antikyra: An ancient Phokian City", Emvolimo 43–44 (Spring–Summer 2001) pp. 123–124 (in Greek).
- ^ Published in Supplementum Epigraphicum Graec. 49-567.
- B.S. Ridgway, op. cit., p.265; Pasquier and Martinez, op. cit., p.20 and pp.83–84.
References
- public domain: Percy Gardner (1911). "Praxiteles". In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 22 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 255–256. This article incorporates text from a publication now in the
Bibliography
- Aileen Ajootian, "Praxiteles", Personal Styles in Greek Sculpture (ed. ISBN 0-521-65738-5), pp. 91–129.
- (in Italian) Antonio Corso, Prassitele, Fonti Epigrafiche e Lettarie, Vita e Opere, three vol., De Lucca, Rome, 1988 and 1991.
- (in French) Marion Muller-Dufeu, La Sculpture grecque. Sources littéraires et épigraphiques, éditions de l'École nationale supérieure des Beaux-Arts, coll. « Beaux-Arts histoire », Paris, 2002 (ISBN 2-84056-087-9), p. 481-521 (new edition of Overbeck's Antiquen Schiftquellen, 1868).
- (in French) ISBN 978-2-35031-111-1).
- Brunilde Sismondo Ridgway, Fourth-Century Styles in Greek Sculpture, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, (ISBN 0-299-15470-X), 1997, pp. 258–267.
- (in French) ISBN 2-7084-0506-3), pp. 242–267.
- Andrew Stewart, Greek Sculpture: An Exploration, Yale University Press, New Haven & London, 1990 (ISBN 0-300-04072-5) pp. 277–281.
External links
- Archaeological Museum of Olympia: The Hermes of Praxiteles
- CMA Collections: Apollo Sauroktonos by Praxiteles
- About Apollo Sauroktonos statues in marble and bronze
- Small head of Aphrodite – Olympia – believed to be an original work by Praxiteles
- 2007 Praxitèle: 2007 exhibition at the Musée du LouvreExhibition catalogue by Alain Pasquier and Jean-Luc Martinez.
- Antonio Corso. The Art of Praxilites. L'ERma di Bretschneider, Roma 2004. Vol I. The development of Praxiteles' workshop and its cultural tradition until the sculptor's acme (364-1 BC)
- Antonio Corso. The Art of Praxilites. L'ERma di Bretschneider, Roma 2004. Vol II. The mature years
- Artcyclopedia: Praxiteles