Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 2.djvu/371

Rh SECOND PERIOD.] ARCHEOLOGY the figure was of wood, stone, or bronze, the rude helpless form of ancient times was preserved. Stimulated, it may be supposed, by the achievements of the newly-invented art, sculptors now began to look to the possibility of pro ducing in marble also a resemblance to the human figure School of in its substantial roundness. The scene of the first success Chius. in this direction was Chius, where a family which for three generations (Melas, Micciades, and Archermus) had been celebrated for its workers in marble, was at this time represented by the brothers Bupalus and Athenis. Works from their hands were to be seen in their native place, in Delus, lasus, and Smyrna, and consisted, so far as we know, of draped figures of goddesses, with the one memor able exception of a statue by Bupalus intended as a carica ture of the poet Hipponax, which was set up in Clazo- menae. The poet took his revenge by circulating some verses which stung the sculptor so severely as to drive him to suicide by hanging. The school of Chius had a rival in that of Magnesia on the Maeander, at the head of which was Bathycles, whose fame is associated with the reliefs and figures on the colossal throne of Apollo at Amyclse (Pausanias, iii. 18, 9; Overbeck, Gesch. d. Griech. Plastik, . p. 86). He and a number of his pupils or assistants had been purposely invited to the task, and what they accomplished was probably the best that could then be done, however short of the standard of later times it may have fallen in the eyes of Pausanias. One noticeable fact is, that after completing their work, they left behind portraits of themselves, and this, in connection with the portrait of Hipponax, may serve to show that sculptors had already begun to direct their attention to the individual features of the human face. As to the date of Bathycles, Pausanias was uncertain and modern critics are divided, some supposing him to have left Magnesia before its de struction, 636 B.C., others on the occasion of its capture by the Persians, 546 B.C. In favour of the latter date is the statement (Pausanias, iii. 10, 8) that the gold received from Croesus (563-549 B.C.) by the Lacedaemonians was made a gift of by them for the decoration of the figure of Apollo at Amyclae. The new phase of art thus entered on, according to tradition, by the lonians, was now taken up vigorously by the Doric sculptors, among whom the first to attain dis tinction were Dipcenus and Scyllis, natives of Crete, and School of members of the ancient guild of sculptors there, which Sicyou. took its name from the mythic Dsedalus. Leaving Crete, they settled in Sicyon, probably on the invitation of the tyrant Clisthenes, and were there commissioned to execute at the public cost a group of statues of deities. Their work was, however, interrupted by a disagreement which ended in the artists having to leave the town. They estab lished themselves in ^Etolia, and were allowed to remain there until, a plague having fallen on Sicyon, the oracle traced it to the wrath of the gods at seeing their statues incomplete. Dipoenus and Scyllis were recalled, and finished their work at a greatly increased price, from which it may be inferred, perhaps, that the original dispute lay in the matter of payment. Among the many sculptures which they executed in Sicyon and other Greek towns, as Cleonae, Argus, Tirynth, and Ambracia, some, it is said, were of wood and ivory, a combination of material which may be regarded as having suggested the chryselephantine sculpture of later times (Pliny, xxxvi. 4, 9, 14 ; Pausanias, i. 15, 1 ; 22, 5; Brunn, Gesch. d. Griech. Kiinstler, i. p. 43). For determining their date, we have a passage of Pliny in which he says, &quot; Primi omnium inclaruerunt marmore sculpendo ; &quot; adding, &quot; Before Cyrus ascended the throne of Persia, about 576 B.C.&quot; From their school proceeded Doryclidas and Dontas, who executed several figures and groups of deities in cedar and gold at Olympia for the Heraeum and the treasuries of the Epidaurians and Megaraeans ; Clearchus of Ehegium, who worked in bronze ; and Tectaeus and Angelion, from whom Gallon, the celebrated ^Eginetan sculptor, learned his craft. As a work of Tectaeus and Angeliou, Pausanias (ii. 32, 5 ; ix. 35, 3) mentions a figure of Apollo at Delus, representing the god in a rigid attitude, the upper arms close to the sides and the fore-arms advanced, in his right hand a bow, and in his left a diminutive group of the three Graces. Contemporary with Doryclidas were Srnilis of yEgina and Gitiades of Sparta, the former of whom is known to have executed a group of the Horae, to be placed with a figure of Themis by Doryclidas. From his hand was also a figure of Hera at Samus. Gitiades, who was at once sculptor, architect, and poet, erected the temple of Athene Chalkioikos, and made the figure of the goddess for it. The temple was coated with plates of bronze, on which were reliefs representing scenes from the legends of Hercules and Perseus, and from mythical incidents, among them being the birth of Athene. Turning now to the remains of Greek sculpture, Remaining which may with more or less certainty be assigned to the period in which the foregoing sculptors were at work, we begin with the three metopes from the oldest of the temples on the Acropolis of Selinus, in Sicily, which up to now have been regarded as furnishing the first authentic, and as yet the clearest, glimpse of that early stage of Greek art when the foreign elements with which it had grown up were being fast eliminated, and the basis laid of a perfectly independent art. It is not within the range of absolute proof, though it is nearly so, that these metopes belonged to the temple erected by the Selinuntians soon after their settlement as colonists, 65 1 B.C., or, as others prefer, 628 (Benndorf, Die Metopen von Selinunt.} They are sculptured in tufa, and represent (1), Perseus cutting off the head of Medusa in the presence of Athene ; (2), Hercules carrying the Cer- copes, bound by the heels, over his shoulders ; and (3), a quadriga to the front. In the first two, while the move ment proceeds from left to right, the faces are all turned broadly to the front, as if looking to the spectator for applause. It may be that the artist, in thus rendering the grimness and grotesqueness of his subjects with a more staring and vivid effect, had recourse, as is argued, to an innovation on the older manner of representing the figures altogether in profile. This much appears to be certain, from the minute attention which he has devoted to the structure of the knees, the lower parts of the legs, the feet, and the movement of the flesh on the shoulders, that the loss of half a face, entailed by a position in profile, would have grieved him. The drapery is stiff, and studiously arranged in neat folds, which are not always produced by the manner in which it is worn. The hair is disposed in a system of circular locks independent of each other. The proportions of the figures vary considerably, though uni formly characterised by a solidity and heaviness which, from the similar appearance of Doric columns, has been designated as Doric in style. The remains of colour found on these sculptures showed that the oegis of Athene had been sketched on the breast with a reddish brown, and that the same colour had been applied to the ground of the relief. The mseander pattern on the broad fold of Athene s chiton was painted brown, her eyes and eyebrows black. The eyes of the Gorgon were red. The folds of the short chiton worn by Hercules were partially left to be indicated by colour. The muscles are strongly exaggerated, so as to mark the extraordinary physical strength attri buted to the heroes of the subject. Markedly contrasting with these metopes is a marble relief found in Samothrace in 1790, and now in the Louvre,