“Sarcophagus of Alexander”
Constantinople
For ourselves we prefer to regard the work of the critical school as scaffolding which will doubtless lead to a permanent erection of ascertained fact. The “Ares,” the “Meleager,” and the “Apoxyomenus” may be neither by Scopas nor Lysippus. It is sufficient if we can honestly detect in them the general characteristics of particular phases of fourth-century sculpture. The “Mausoleum Charioteer,” the “Menelaus and Patroclus,” and the “Niobe” group may none of them be the actual design or handiwork of Scopas. We cannot do more than detect in them the general characteristics of the period in which Scopas was a dominating influence. But there must have been a personality to popularise the new style—a brain and hand through whom the new artistic tendency first found expression. With all the reservations that these remarks imply, we give this personality the name of Scopas, and, as we said before, regard him as the first Greek to realise that marble and bronze could express the more passionate intensity of feeling which naturally followed the increasing importance of the individual and the individual’s thoughts and emotions.
So with Lysippus. The individual is not an essential element in the history of Greek sculpture. If he never lived, another sculptor “of the same name” gave plastic expression to the more realistic ideals aroused by the triumph of Macedonia. Some master inaugurated the realistic school, which persisted beside the idealistic, based upon the art of Praxiteles. Whether Lysippus, Diappus, or an unknown sculptor of the Hellenistic school moulded the “Apoxyomenus” is of small consequence. Moreover, when all is said and done, there is not much to choose between this position and that of Mr. Percy Gardner himself. As Mr. Frost has pointed out, the length of limb and lightness of frame seen in the “Apoxyomenus” are only the tendencies of the “Agias” carried a step further. When Mr. Percy Gardner goes on to suggest that the Vatican statue is not by the master but by the pupil, he practically accepts the general view we hold. Barring the “Hermes” of Praxiteles, it is practically impossible to attribute dogmatically any of the Hellenic sculptures to the craftsmanship of particular artists. Inscriptions, literary references, and further Greek originals, or Roman copies, may yet be found. For the present, the art lover will do well to content himself with realising the methods which the critical schools have adopted, and the path by which it seeks answers to the high problems it desires to solve.
We cannot pass from our consideration of the last effort of Hellenic sculpture proper without a reference to one other work associated with the Lysippic period. We mean the magnificent sarcophagus now at Constantinople, and sometimes called the “Sarcophagus of Alexander.” This is clearly a Greek original produced about 300 b.c. It was found early in the last decade in the family vault of a Sidonian king at Saida, with several sarcophagi of the finest style. Those who cannot see the original, can gain a clear idea of the great work from the magnificent publication issued by Hamdi Bey, the discoverer, entitled “Une Necropole Royale de Sidon,” of which the British Museum possesses a copy. All sides of the sarcophagus are decorated with a wealth of sculptured design and ornament. Macedonians, Greeks, and Persians all take part in the scenes of battle and chase represented by the sculptor. The work is in the finest preservation. The silver bridles and weapons have been removed, but in all other respects it is perfect. One head is missing but this is due to an accident since its discovery. Even the original colours can be traced. Indeed, any one wishing to obtain a clear idea of the use the Greeks made of colour in sculpture cannot do better than study the fine coloured plates picturing the “Sarcophagus of Alexander” prepared for Hamdi Bey.
Vatican, Rome
Greek Portraiture
So far few references to the portrait sculptures of Greece either in the fifth or fourth century have been necessary. We have now, however, to redeem the promise to make clear the use Lysippus and his school made of realistic detail in this department of art. The opportunity suggests a few general remarks upon Hellenic portrait sculpture generally. Before the latter half of the fourth century there was no portraiture in Greece, in the modern sense of the word. That is to say, the sculptor made no effort to produce a realistic representation of the sitter. He rather sought to present a type suggested by the individual. Take, for instance, the British Museum bust of “Pericles”—probably a copy of the statue by Cresilas dedicated after the revolt of Samos (440 b.c.). This stood on the Acropolis, hard by the Lemnian “Athena” of Phidias, on the right-hand side as the Athenian passed up through the Propylæa. Even such a well-known figure as the warrior statesman is not highly individualised. The clear-cut brow and the broad mouth tell of the profound judgment and sober will needful to the man who gave Athenian policy its deepest and most imaginative characteristics. The voluptuous lips tell of the passionate emotionalism which brought Pericles into sympathy with his fellow countrymen, and which every true Athenian would have considered it inhuman to crush. But these characteristics are rather those of the ideal statesman which the Athenian system sought to produce. Every trait applicable to Pericles alone has been removed.
Much the same may be said of the well-known “Sophocles,” or the so-called “Phocion” in the Vatican, two of the finest Greek portraits of the best style extant. Both have all the strongly idealistic qualities of Hellenic portraiture before the Alexandrian age. Neither the “Sophocles” nor the “Phocion” can be termed portraits in the sense that the Roman busts are portraits. Both represent ideal types rather than individual personalities. The Greek thinker desired to look at everything from the universal point of view. He sought to form general abstract conceptions about humanity and nature, applicable to any and every part of the universe. The task of the Greek sculptor was, therefore, to produce figures embodying these types. Phocion was to him the incorruptible statesman. Sophocles was the typical Athenian gentleman—sound in body as in mind.
So when Lysippus set out to carve a portrait statue such as that preserved in the marble bust of “Alexander” in the British Museum, he did not picture the man or the king of Macedon, but the descendant of Achilles, whose mission it was to conquer the world. He abstracted every trait that endured but for the moment, and sought only to express the heroic side of the Macedonian character. Plutarch (“Life of Alexander”) tells of the impression this method made upon Alexander himself. We read:
“When Lysippus first made a portrait of Alexander with his countenance uplifted to heaven, just as Alexander was wont to gaze with his neck gently inclined to one side, some one wrote the following note in appropriate epigram:
‘The man of bronze is as one that looks on Zeus, and will address him thus: “O Zeus, I place earth beneath my feet, do thou rule Olympus.”’
Vatican, Rome
After Lysippus
“For this reason Alexander gave orders that only Lysippus should make portraits of him, since he alone, as it would seem, truly revealed his nature in bronze and portrayed his courage in visible form, while others in their anxiety to reproduce the bend of the neck, and the melting look of the eyes, failed to preserve his masculine and leonine aspect.”
The portraits of Lysippus therefore differ from such an ideal figure as the “Pericles” in the skilful use made of realism. The portrait is cast in an heroic mould, but this is not obtained at the expense of all likeness. Note the way in which the peculiar eyes of the king and the turn of his neck have been utilised.
The change was not entirely for the better. The passage from Plutarch itself suggests where an artist of less than the front rank would fail. The followers of Lysippus were not content to make this sparing use of detail. Forgetful that general truths and general emotions can be embodied in marble and bronze most clearly and therefore most properly, they made realistic detail an end in itself. Pliny tells of Lysistratus of Sicyon, a brother of Lysippus, and says that he introduced the practice of “life-like portraiture,” previous artists having sought “to accentuate the more beautiful qualities of the sitter.” From this it was but a step to the work of Demetrius of Alopece, whose portraits were so realistic that Lucian called him “the maker of men” rather than the “maker of statues.”
Lucian’s phrase reminds us that we have brought our survey of Hellenic sculpture to a close. The downfall of the city-state system militated against those habits of thought which ever aimed at eliminating every trait applicable to the individual object, and which were so essentially Hellenic. When the aristocratic or monarchical rule of the country-state was substituted, the rural voter no longer troubled to exercise his franchise. He left the duty of recording a vote to the townsmen on the spot. The earlier constant contact with actuality became a thing of the past.
Speaking of the essential quality of Greek sculpture, Pater has said:
“Hellenic breadth and generality come of a culture, minute, severe, constantly renewed, and concentrating its impressions into certain pregnant types.”
These words exactly describe the relation of Greek sculpture to general culture during the fifth and fourth centuries. When Greece failed to withstand Macedonia, the entire current of social and political life changed. A culture which had been Hellenic became Hellenistic.