Page:The New International Encyclopædia 1st ed. v. 09.djvu/253

* GREEK ART. 219 GREEK ART. teiing upon this age we pass into a new phase of Greek art. The conquests oi Alcx;UKler had opened the East to Greek rulers, Greek thought. Greek life, and had at the same time abolished the old supremacy of the cities of Greece. It is true that Athens still preserves a shadow of her former primacy; but the chief seats of art are now in Asia or Egypt, and the great schools which can be distinguished are those of Alexan- dria, Pergamus, and Rhodes. This change in the centres, however, is due to a still greater change in the artistic attitude and tradition. The great works of Greece had been completed, and the new Greek centres were now the scene of activity. These new works, however, were brought into contrast with the colossal products of the earlier Oriental civilizations, and, moreover, they were under the patronage of wealthy kings, anxious to vie with their predecessors. The earlier Greeks had not in general represented contem])orary scenes, unless in an idealized form; but now the minds of men were filled with the wonderful conquests of Alexander and the fierce wars of his successors. Hence a tendency appears to commemorate the deeds of the present in colossal monuments, such as the great battle groups and the altar of Attalus and Eumenes at Pergamus, where in fact this tendency seems to have found its most striking expression. There is also an- other side to this substitution of the great mon- archies for the free cities. The citizen, enriched by the new wealth and retiring from public affairs, seeks to beautify his hovise and gardens. More than ever art is at the service of the indi- vidual, and the taste of the patron determined the subject of the artist. Tlie bustle and stir of the new age, with its nervous haste and con- stant change, seems to have produced, as so often, a sentimental reaction in favor of the good old times of innocence and the desire to retreat to nature from the great cities. The bucolic poetry is one expression of this sentiment, and in art, especially that associated with Alexandria, we find a further reflection of this tendency. Genre groups, especially those representing children or country life, are commqn. and a whole group of moniunents, the so-called 'Hellenistic reliefs.' in- tended for insertion in walls in place of paint- ings, brings before us a number of these scenes, Avurkcd out with the most painstaking devotion to details, especially in the rendering of the ac- cessories and background. (See Schreiber, Brun- nen Reliefs dcs Palazzo Grimani, Leipzig, 1S88, and BcUenistische Relief hilder . Leipzig. ISSD.) For while for the earlier artist the human figure had been of chief interest, and the background had been barely indicated or even entirely neglect- ed, now in many cases the human tigure is merely an incident. In response apparenth- to popular denuind. art lends itself to themes hitherto but little treated; the trivial. f.' tastic, comic, and licentious all enter freely into the lesser products of this age. Not that all this art is to be con- demned. Portraiture attained high excellence, and many of the lesser works, especially the beautiful terracotta figurines, show a delicacy and refinement of sentiment and a naturalness of conception which render them altogether pleas- ing. The technical skill of the artists is at its height, and their careful studies of anatomy bear fruit in astonishing accuracy in the rendering of details, which compels admiration even when their sensationalism calls for oensure. Vol. IX.— 15. At the beginning of this period stands Ly- sippus of Sicj-on ( q.v. ), the last of the great artists of the mother country who.se personality is known to us, and who was regarded by his pupils and contemporaries as the culmination of artistic history. It is necessary to call attention here to his peculiar position as an artist who seems to have combined nuich of the Attic grace in conception with the careful atten- tion to proportion, and to the technical side of bronze-casting, which belonged to a successor of Polj'clitus as the leader of the Peloponnesian School. His influence was enormous, and much in Hellenistic art is little else than a modifica- tion or imitation of his peculiarities. The "Apoxyomenas" of the Vatican has long been the starting-point for the study of his art; but a most important addition to our sources has been made in the marble group of Daoclias the Thessalian and his ancestors, recently discovered at Delphi, which can scarcely be anything else than a marble copy of a bronze original by L}'- sippus at Pharsalia. (See Homolle. Bulletin de correspondance helle'nique, xxiii., Paris, 1899.) Otlier imjjortant works of this period are the "Nike of Samothrace." in the Louvre, which shows plainly the survival of the Attic School ; the bronze figure of a seated bo.xer in Rome, where brutal realism is joined with a masterly apprecia- tion of pose and technique: and a number of ideal portraits, in which the artist endeavors to give his conception of the character of the man. like the portraits of Homer, Anacreon. and many anonymous heads, which have often been most ar- bitrarily named. In Athens there are indications of an endeavor to return to the types of the fifth century, and toward the end of the period a pronounced archaistic imitation of the very early works with their stiff draperies and mincing gait appears. The art of Alexandria seems to have been largely decorative, and that school produced no great artists. At Pergamus the great victories of Attalus I. (B.C. 241-197) were commemorated in a series of colossal statues, of which the "Dying Gaul" of the Capitoline Museum, and the noble group of the "Gaul and His Wife" in the Museo Ludovisi, are the best examples, though there are smaller copies of other figures, which seem to have been replicas of a series at Athens, in many Euroix>an museiuns. Eimienes II. (B.C. 197-159), in his erection of the great altar, led the Pergamene art to one of its most characteristic works. The enormous extent of surface (about 400 feet long and 7% high), and the tumultuous character which must necessarily belong to any representa- tion of the "Battle of the Gods and Giants." gave the artists full scope for the disjilny of variety in inuigination and technical skill in the compo- sition and execution. Though devoid of the calm simplicity desirable in montnncntal sculpture and characteristic of the best Greek work, the tremendous energy' and the boldness of conception make the altar-frieze one of the notable monu- ments of the world. The tendencies of the Per- gamene School seem to have been continued at Rhodes, where early in the Roman period, or po.ssibly earlier, was produced the famous Lao- colin group, a work in which the realistic repre- sentation of physical suffering rc.iches its highest point : a group that has been extrnvasrantly praised and unstintedlv condcnuied. The sub- ject is unfitted for artistic use, but the artists