CHAPTER VI, INDIVIDUALISM
The great religious ideals of the fifth century were, as we have seen,
closely bound up with the subordination of the individual to the State;
and their expression in sculpture was also due in almost every case to
the employment of the artist by the community. In the fourth century, on
the other hand, we find on every side a stronger assertion of
individuality. It was a commonplace among Attic orators in the fourth
century to contrast the private luxury and ostentation of their own day
with the simplicity of life among the great men of the earlier age,
whose houses could not be distinguished from those of the common people,
though their public buildings and the temples they raised to the gods
were of unparalleled splendour. In religion, and above all in religious
art, we find something of the same tendency. There are few if any
records of the dedication during the fourth century of those great
statues of the chief gods which were looked back to by all subsequent
generations as the embodiment of a national ideal. But there were,
perhaps, more statues of the gods made in the fourth century which were
the objects not merely of artistic admiration, but of intense and
sometimes morbid personal devotion. The mere list of the gods preferred
for representation is an indication in itself; while in the fifth
century, Zeus and Athena and Hera, the great gods of the State or of the
Hellenic race, are the subjects of the most famous statues, in the
fourth century it is rather Aphrodite and Dionysus and Asclepius, those
whose gifts contribute to individual happiness or enjoyment, that offer
most scope to the powers of the artist.
And the sculptors themselves, in the fourth century, show more
individuality of style. In the latter part of the fifth century the
genius of Phidias had so dominated religious art that the works of his
successors, men like Alcamenes and Agoracritus, could hardly be
distinguished from his. But the great sculptors of the fourth century,
Scopas and Praxiteles and Lysippus, not to mention others of less note,
devoted themselves not so much to the expression through perfect
physical form of great religious ideals, but to a realisation of the
character and, so to speak, the personality of the gods whom they
portrayed. And they did this by the same means by which they expressed
in their art the characters and passions of heroes or of men, thereby
removing the gods from the sphere of passionless benignity and power
which is assigned to them by the art of the fifth century. Such a
treatment evidently gave more scope for variety in the styles of the
sculptors; and although we can sometimes trace the influence of one upon
another, yet each clearly shows his own characteristics. We are
expressly told of Praxiteles that he showed the most admirable skill in
infusing into his marble works the passions and emotions of the soul;
and the extant remains of the statues made by Scopas and Lysippus show
that they also, each in his own way, attained the same results.
If the sculpture of the fifth century was ethical, expressing noble
ideals of character whether in gods or men, that of the fourth century
may be called psychological. It is not content with character; it
expresses also mood and even passion, and thereby gives more prominence
to individuality. At first sight it is not easy to realise how this
change came to affect the representations of the gods. The gods of Homer
are, indeed, full of individual character; but we have seen how in the
fifth century, though the greatest sculptors declared it was the gods of
Homer that they represented, these representations were idealised and
raised above those human touches in which the individuality is most
conspicuous. There was, in the Homeric hymns and in the lyric poets, a
delight in details of incident and in personal peculiarities and even in
romantic tales about the gods; and in the fourth century, when the high
idealisation of the preceding age is no longer so strong in its
influence, we find a similar tendency in art as well. While the great
statues of the gods in the fifth century are almost all represented as
either enthroned or standing, not employed in any particular action or
function, the most characteristic examples of the statues of gods made
in the fourth century have almost all some definite motive. We may take
as an example what was perhaps the most famous statue of antiquity, the
Aphrodite by Praxiteles at Cnidus. The goddess is represented as nude;
and it is often said that goddesses would not have been so represented
in the fifth century. It is true that full drapery seems more consistent
with the dignified and august figures of Phidian art. But if the
religious type had required that Phidias should make a nude goddess, we
may be sure he would have made her naked and unashamed, with no more
self-consciousness than a nude Apollo; above all, he would not have
thought it necessary to provide a motive for her nudity. With Praxiteles
it is otherwise. He represents the goddess as preparing for the bath,
and just letting her last garment slip from her hand on to a vase that
stands beside her; and, in addition to this provision of a motive—an
excuse, one might almost say—for representing her without her clothes,
he hints, from the instinctive gesture of her other hand which she holds
before her body, at a half-conscious shrinking from exposure, a feeling
of modesty which, however suitable to a woman, is by no means consistent
with a high ideal of the goddess. The face and figure are of
extraordinary physical beauty of type, of a breadth and nobility which
contrast with the smaller, prettier, and less dignified forms of later
art; the gesture, too, has not the conscious coquetry which we see in
such a work as the Venus de' Medici. But, on the other hand, we must
recognise that the statue represents the goddess under a human rather
than a divine aspect, that even her mood and feeling of timidity are
portrayed in a manner which, however charming in itself, is totally
inconsistent with her worship as a great goddess. We are not surprised
to hear that this statue inspired a personal passion; she is the goddess
of love, and is represented as not beyond the reach of human attraction;
but she is brought down to the level of mortals, rather than capable of
raising mortals to a higher sphere by her contemplation. It is the same,
though perhaps to a less degree, with other statues of the gods made in
the fourth century. The motives with which the later Greeks went to
visit the great statues of the Phidian age were, as we have seen, to a
great extent religious, and their contemplation was regarded to some
extent as a service; here we have "idolatry" in its highest form. But
those who went to see the Aphrodite of Cnidus went chiefly to enjoy the
beauty of the statue; and although this may be the best thing from the
artistic point of view, it certainly has not the same religious import.
There is another element in the individuality of fourth-century statues
which may appeal to modern artists, and which certainly did appeal—in
an inverted manner—to early Christian writers of invectives against
pagan idolatry. It was said that Phryne had posed as a model for the
Cnidian Aphrodite of Praxiteles; and the character of the goddess was
inferred from that of her votary. It is clear that a Greek artist could
not have, in the case of a nude female statue, the same choice of types
constantly present to his observation and his memory as he had in the
case of male statues; and the individuality of the model, however
beautiful, would thus tend to assert itself against the type. Thus
personality and individual character, "the ultimate condition of
beauty," to use Mr. Ruskin's words, in modern as in Tuscan art, comes
much nearer to expression in the fourth century than in the fifth. But a
study of such a statue as the Cnidian Aphrodite shows us nevertheless
that in the beauty of the type and the avoidance of the accidental, the
art of Praxiteles was as far removed from realism as it was from the
vague generalisation of Græco-Roman and modern pseudo-classical art. It
is full of life and individuality, but it is the individuality of a
character realised within his mind by the artist, not merely copied from
the human model he set before him.
Another method by which the motive becomes prominent in the art of the
fourth century is to be seen in the interpretation of mythological
conceptions. These are realised and embodied in statues; but the statues
offer a new, sometimes, it seems, almost an accidental and trifling
version of a solemn religious conception; it appears as if the artist
were playing with a mythological subject. Thus in the statue made by
Praxiteles of Apollo Sauroktonos, "the lizard-slayer," the god stands
with an arrow in his hand, as if trying to catch with it a lizard who
runs up a tree; it suggests a boyish game rather than the epithet of a
god. Again, the worship of Artemis Brauronia at Athens was one of the
oldest and most sacred cults in the city, and women at marriage and at
other critical times of their life used to offer her their garments,
thereby bringing themselves into close contact with the goddess and
claiming her special protection, the garments being actually placed on
the old image. If, as is probable, the Artemis of Gabii is a copy of the
statue substituted by Praxiteles for this old image, we see there the
goddess, as a graceful girlish figure, fastening a cloak upon her
shoulder. This may be taken as symbolical of the earlier custom of
placing the garments on the statue; but we have evidence that the
worshippers were not content with such a symbolic contact, but had the
actual garments placed on the new statue as they had been on the old.
Here we have probably a case of unsuccessful substitution; the artistic
representation did not suffice to replace the actual rite. But the
representation itself is doubtless intended in a way which, however
graceful, does not represent any deep religious feeling; one feels that
the artist found the subject a convenient one as an artistic motive,
rather than that he had any deep religious idea to express.
We must not, however, go too far in denying religious ideals to the
fourth century altogether. Some of the gods, who came very near to the
life of man, but who were nevertheless worshipped with a real belief in
their power and benevolence, found at this time their fullest expression
in art. An example may be seen in the Demeter of Cnidus, the mother
sorrowing for her daughter, whose suffering brings her into close
sympathy with human weakness, and whose mysteries, perhaps more than any
other Hellenic service, brought men and women into personal communion
with the gods. We may take as another instance the head of Asclepius
from Melos in the British Museum. Here, as Brunn has pointed out in his
admirable analysis of its forms, we may recognise not so much the god as
the half-human, half-divine physician, a genial and friendly spirit who
persuades rather than commands. The expression is not only intellectual,
but has also an infinite gentleness, as of one not himself unacquainted
with mortal pain and sorrow; and such a conception, as we know from
Christian art, often appeals to those who find the majesty of Zeus too
distant, the idea of his godhead too abstract. In such almost human
ideals the individuality of the fourth century finds its full scope, as
in other half-human creations of the artist's imagination. Apollo as the
inspired musician or—if we accept the derivation of the Apollo
Belvedere from a fourth-century original—as the disdainful archer,
Hermes, the protector and playmate of his little brother Dionysus, and
many other such representations of the gods in their personal moods and
characteristic actions, seem in many ways less divine, less full of
religious feeling than such an Asclepius; if the great gods are brought
too near to human passions and weaknesses, they cannot but lose much of
their divinity.
One might easily multiply examples of similar motives in the statues of
the gods made in the fourth century; but we should find the same
underlying principles in all cases. The gods are indeed more clearly
realised as having personal character and individuality, and for this
reason they may sometimes inspire keener personal feelings of worship or
even of romantic devotion. But the older and higher conceptions of the
gods, as an essential part of the State religion, and as embodying the
ideals of the race or of the city, are no longer to be found, except in
a somewhat lifeless continuance of the fifth-century tradition. The
intensity of expression which we find in human heroes is, indeed,
expressed also in such types as that of Apollo the musician or of
Dionysus the god of inspired enthusiasm. But this tendency is not fully
developed until a later age. The subtle distinctions of character
between the different gods are, on the other hand, now most keenly
observed and most skilfully rendered. But in spite of this, one does not
feel that the artist has the same belief in the gods and in their power
as we can see in the Phidian age. If his artistic attainment is possibly
more skilful, the religious import of his work is certainly less.
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