The Cerigotto Bronze
Athens
The marbles, with one exception, were unrecognizable. But the bronzes had fared better. In particular, a life-sized statue of an athlete, with right arm outstretched, proved capable of complete restoration. It now stands in the museum at Athens. The critical battle as to the date of its casting was a long one. General opinion to-day regards it as an early Hellenistic work based upon the Lysippic style. In the “Cerigotto Bronze,” the tendency towards excessive realism noted in the “Farnese Hercules” has not proceeded so far. But in the body, and especially in the treatment of the abdominal muscles, a departure from the idealistic standard approved by the great masters of the fourth century can be clearly detected. Instead of being content with a suggestion of the natural form, the Hellenistic sculptor aims at realistic representation. He seeks to copy the human form, regardless of the lesson afforded by every great sculptor of Greece, that the more indirect methods of idealism are far better calculated to arouse the uplifting emotions which every true man and woman must feel before the grandest object Heaven ever made.
The classical art critics were fully aware of the snare which lay in this passion for extreme realism of detail. They clearly recognized it to be a characteristic feature of much Hellenistic sculpture. They tell, for instance, of the statue of the “Dying Jocasta” in which the Hellenistic sculptor mingled silver with the bronze, to denote the pallor of coming death. Pliny adds that the sculptor Aristonidas of Rhodes mixed iron with the metal from which he cast a statue of Athamas—that the ruddy glow might suggest the blush of remorse which a father who had hurled his son from the rocks would naturally wear. Both these instances are narrated as mere eccentricities. Their interest for ourselves lies in the fact that they illustrate precisely the same tendency which distinguishes the “Hercules” of Glycon from that which Lysippus had made three centuries earlier or the “Cerigotto Bronze” from a similar work by a fourth-century sculptor.
When analyzed, this tendency towards realism points clearly to an absence of that fine critical faculty with which every supreme artist is endowed. It argues a lack of moderation which in the end must lead to disaster. The admixture of silver to the bronze “Dying Jocasta” was no isolated case. Hellenistic Greece proved itself open to a charge of immoderate folly on many another occasion. The instance furnished by that “Wonder of the World,” the Rhodian Colossus, will occur to every one. The great statue of the Sun-god at Rhodes measured 105 ft. high. It was cast hollow, the separate pieces being set up, one upon another, around an inner structure of masonry. Pliny says of it:—
“The greatest marvel of all, however, was the colossal figure of the sun at Rhodes made by Chares of Lindus, a pupil of Lysippus. This figure was seventy cubits in height, and after standing fifty-six years was overthrown by an earthquake. But even as it lies prostrate, it is a marvel. Few men can embrace its thumb. Its fingers are larger than most statues. There are huge yawning caverns where the limbs have been broken.”
The Followers of Praxiteles
Considered as a whole the sculpture of Hellenistic Greece exhibits an intensification of the characteristics which distinguish the sculpture of Praxiteles and Lysippus from that of Phidias and Polyclitus. So far we have only traced the indebtedness of the Hellenistic sculptor to Lysippus. We have seen how one branch of the Hellenistic school continued to favour the virile subjects Lysippus had preferred, how it accentuated the natural realism which characterized his style. The second branch, which carried forward the traditions of Praxiteles, was equally potent. Though it cannot be said that these sculptors “blended with their marbles the emotions of the soul,” as had been said of Praxiteles, yet the feeling for grace of line and sensuous beauty, which were the keynotes of the Praxitelean manner, remained.
The finest work of this great division of Hellenistic art is probably the celebrated “Belvedere Apollo” in the Vatican collection. In these days, the “Apollo” is, perhaps, not esteemed as highly as it was a century ago, when opportunities for appreciating the true beauties of the sculpture of the age of Phidias and Pericles were wanting. But it will never entirely lose its power of attraction.
The modelling of the hair and the short cloak show that the original was a bronze. As to the motive of the statue, James Thomson, in his “Liberty,” writes:
“All conquest-flushed, from prostrate Python, came
The Quivered God. In graceful act he stands,
His arm extended with the slackened bow:
Light flows his easy robe, and fain displays
A manly-softened form. The bloom of gods
Seems youthful o’er the beardless cheek to wave.
His features yet heroic ardour warms;
And sweet subsiding to a native smile,
Mixed with the joy elating conquest gives,
A scattered frown exalts his matchless air.”
For many years, however, the archæologists have been battling, proving and disproving the proposition that the god is really holding the ægis with the head of Medusa before his terror-stricken foes. The suggestion is that the original of the Belvedere was intended to be set up with a statue of Artemis—the “Artemis of Versailles,” now in the Louvre—at Delphi, in commemoration of the defeat of the Gauls in 276 b.c. It will be remembered that Macedonia was invaded by the Gauls about the year 280 b.c., the time when the barbarians from the North overran Asia Minor and founded the kingdom of Galatia after a severe defeat at the hands of Attalus of Pergamus. Sosthenes rallied the Macedonian army, but, in spite of all his efforts, the Gauls under Brennus continued to push south. Thermopylæ was garrisoned as it had been at the time of the Persian invasion. The entire Greek world sent contingents to repel the invaders. Finally, legend tells that the raid was stayed by the divine interposition of Apollo and Artemis. Angered at the daring of Brennus, Apollo called upon the forces of nature to defend the shrine at Delphi. An earthquake and a devastating storm forced Brennus to retire.