Hellenistic Sculpture

Nike of Samothrace, ca. 190 B.C.

 

 

Nike is a victory figure.  Here, she appears to be alighting on the prow of a ship which was situated in large, two-tiered fountain.  At the base of the fountain were large boulders which caused turbulence in the flowing water.  This is a sculpture that was intended to interact with the larger environment.  It was probably intended to represent a naval victory.  Samothrace was in the Aegean, to the north, and was controlled by the Ptolomies of Egypt. 

 

Stylistically, it is an example of Hellenistic Baroque. Notice the vigorous but illogical movement of the drapery.  One could even argue that the piece has a sense of color achieved by strong light/dark contrast.  This is part of a work of art conceived and executed in a theatrical context (FYI, all of these points also pertain to the Italian Baroque style of the 17th Century).

 

Alexandros of Antioch, Venus de Milo, ca. 150-175 B.C.

 

 

 

We have seen eroticism in Late Classical sculpture — the Knidian Aphrodite, for example.  However, the style known as Hellenistic Eroticism is much more seductive and frank.

 

This sculpture of Aphrodite was found on the island of Delos.  It is over-life-size.   Her hand is preserved separately and holds the golden apple from the garden of the Hesperides that was given to her by Paris.  So she has an attribute that positively identifies her as Aphrodite.

 

It may be that her other hand was clasping her drapery.  Overall, this piece captures the illusion that Aphrodite is trying to keep her drapery in place, but that it may drop away in a moment.

 

Sleeping Satyr (Barbarini Faun), ca. 230-200 B.C.

 

 

The Barbarini Faun (so-called because of the family who owned it) or Sleeping Satyr provides another example of Hellenistic Eroticim.  Sleep is a state of suspended consciousness and associated with dreams and fantasy.  It is really the antithesis of Greek rationality and discipline.  This is a satyr — a follower of Dionysos.   He is quite frankly nude -- but is it heroic nudity?  No!  Is the body imbued with sensuality?  It certainly is a beautiful, male body, but he appears to be drunken and asleep.  Thus, we interact with this pieces as voyeurs.  

 

Aphrodite, Eros, and Pan, ca. 100 B.C.

 

 

This a style that has been termed Hellenistic Burlesque.  Here the emphasis is on gutsy, lusty humor, or parody.  This style also has a cruel streak — laughter at the expense of others.  It is consistent with the theatre and the poetry of the Hellenistic period. 

 

This sculpture was found on the island of Delos.  We know that it was for by Dionysios of Berytos (now Beirut) for a businessman’s club.  In other words, this was not meant for a temple or a sacred space.  We also know that this not an isolated example of a whimsical figural composition.

 

The three figures in this group are Pan, Aphrodite, and Eros.  Pan is a half-man-half-goat creature of Greek mythological origins that lived in the woods.  Aphrodite trying to pull away from Pan.  She has removed one of her sandals and is using it to defend herself.  Eros (or Cupid) is Aphrodite’s son, and he is coming to her rescue.

 

The scenes does not appear overly aggressive — almost playful.  All of the figures seem to be smiling.  Aphrodite's physique, however, seems more frankly real than ideal.  Still, it may be a play on the idea of beauty and the beast.

 

Seated Boxer, ca. 100-50- B.C. Riace Warrior, ca. 460-450 B.C.

 

This style is termed Hellenistic Pathos, a style that emphasizes loss, sadness, pain, etc.  In essence, the male athlete is a Greek subject.  But, with the Seated Boxer, the depiction is not idealized and not heroic.

 

This is the original bronze figure (there is a better reproduction in your book).  It may have been part of a figural group because it implies interaction with another figure — but we have no more information than that.  This is not a portrait, but a type.  The figure is seated, appears defeated.  His face and body are heavily battered.  His has been broken.  His teeth are broken.  He has cauliflower ears due to cartilage that has been damaged and heals improperly.  The cuts on his face that are inlaid with copper, which gives an appearance similar to blood.

 

Compare and contrast the Hellenistic Seated Boxer with the Early Classical Riace Warrior.

 

The Seated Boxer is a sculpture that was designed to appeals to our emotions.  It is a pathetic image that is full of detail. 

 

Old Market Woman, ca. 150-100 B.C.

 

 

The Old Market Woman is an example of the Hellenistic Grotesque style.  This classification includes a wide variety of highly non-idealized figures usually from the lowest orders of the society.  For example, there are sculptures of hunchbacks, dwarves, lowly servants, hermaphrodites, drunken beggars, etc.  We do not know the purpose of these sculptures — but again they appear to have been designed to elicit emotion. 

 

This is not a portrait, but a type.  This is an old woman who has had a very rough life.  She looks haggard and tired.  She is engaged in a task that she has repeated many, many times — bringing her vegetables and her chickens to the market.  Is she beautiful in her own way?  Or is she a reminder that beauty fades?

 

Hellenistic Art Under Roman Patronage

 

Three sculptors from Rhodes, Lacoön, early 1st century B.C.

 

 

 

You do not need to know all three names, but do know that this piece was done by three sculptors from Rhodes (i.e. Athanadoros, Hegesandros, and Polydoros of Rhodes).  Now, we have Greek sculptors working for a Roman patron.  This marble sculpture is believed to be an original sculpture — not a copy.  The style is Hellenistic Baroque -- similar to the style of the Altar of Zeus at Pergamon.  It was found during the Renaissance in the remains of the Palace of Roman emperor Titus and is believed to date to the first century A.D.

 

The subject of this piece, titled Lacoön, is described in Virgil’s Aeneid.  Virgil (70-19 B.C.) was a Roman poet.  The Aeneid tells the story of Aeneas, a figure briefly mentioned in Homer’s The Illiad as a man who would one day found a dynasty of kings.  Virgil uses this Homeric figure and then writes his own stories to relate to the Roman.  Virgil hoped that his writings would be embraced by the Roman peoples in the same way that the Homer’s work became part of Greek identity. 

 

Lacoön was a Trojan priest.  To understand what we see in the sculpture above, let's read Virgil.  Then, we should be able to describe what we see in the composition above.

 

From: Linnea H. Wren, Perspectives on Western Art (New York: Harper & Row, 1987), 105-7.

 

Virgil, The Aeneid

 

The Wooden Horse

 

Laocoön came running,

With a great throng at his heels, down from the hilltop

As fast as ever he could, and before he reached us,

Cried in alarm: “Are you crazy, wretched people?

Do you think they have gone, the foe? Do you think that any

Gifts of the Greeks lack treachery? Ulysses,—

What was his reputation? Let me tell you,

Either the Greeks are hiding in this monster,

Or it’s some trick of war, a spy, or engine,

To come down on the city. Tricky business

Is hiding in it. Do not trust it, Trojans,

Do not believe this horse. Whatever it may be,

I fear the Greeks, even when bringing presents.”

With that, he hurled the great spear at the side

With all the strength he had. It fastened, trembling

And the struck womb rang hollow, a moaning sound.

He had driven us, almost, to let the light in

With the point of the steel, to probe, to tear, but something

Got in his way, the gods, or fate, or counsel,

Ill-omened, in our hearts; or Troy would be standing

And Priam’s lofty citadel unshaken. . . .

 

 

The Death of Laocoön

 

            Then something else,

Much greater and more terrible, was forced

Upon us, troubling our unseeing spirits.

Laocoön, allotted priest of Neptune,

Was slaying a great bull beside the altars,

When suddenly, over the tranquil deep

From Tenedos,—I shudder even now,

Recalling it—there came a pair of serpents

With monstrous coils breasting the sea, and aiming

Together for the shore. Their heads and shoulders

Rose over the waves, upright, with bloody crests,

The rest of them trailing along the water,

Looping in giant spirals; the foaming sea

Hissed under their motion. And they reached the land,

Their burning eyes suffused with blood and fire,

Their darting tongues licking the hissing mouths.

Pale at the sight, we fled. But they went on

Straight toward Laocoön, and first each serpent

Seized in its coils his two young sons, and fastened

The fangs in those poor bodies. And the priest

Struggled to help them, weapons in his hand.

They seized him, bound him with their mighty coils,

Twice round his waist, twice round his neck, they squeezed

With scaly pressure, and still towered above him.

Straining his hands to tear the knots apart,

His chaplets stained with blood and the black poison,

He uttered horrible cries, not even human,

More like the bellowing of a bull, when wounded

It flees the altar, shaking from the shoulder

The ill-aimed axe. And on the pair went gliding

To the highest shrine, the citadel of Pallas,

and vanished underneath the feet of the goddess

And the circle of her shield.

            The people trembled

Again; they said Laocoön deserved it,

Having, with spear, profaned the sacred image.

It must be brought to its place, they cried, the goddess

Must be appeased.

 

 

 

The cave at Sperlonga 

 

Sperlonga is located about 60 miles south of Rome along the sea.  This was a natural cave that was engineered to contain lagoons and several life-sized statue groups.  The idea of the statue group was originally conceived by Lysippos, but here was executed by the same three Rhodian Sculptors who worked on the Laocoön. 

 

The cave was behind a Roman Imperial Villa at Sperlonga — that is the villa of Tiberius.  The cave may have been used for banquets.  It was located at the end of a reflecting pool. 

 

 

This is an illustration of the Cave of Tiberius at Sperlonga.  

 

 

As you can see, the cave contained four figural groups from The Odyssey: 

All of these figure groups are life size and it is believed that there may have been some interaction between the visitors to the cave and these groups (i.e. the illusion of participation in a  fantastic experience).

 

The debate associated with the dating of these sculptures still exists today.  It is not clear if these are original sculptures from the Middle Hellenistic Period (2nd C. B.C.) or these are Roman copies of Greek originals produced around 1st century A.D. or if these were an original creation from the 1st Century A.D.

 

Nonetheless, we will examine only one of these figural groups.

 

Odysseus and His Men Blinding the Cyclops, Polyphemos, from Sperlonga

 

 

The scene is the blinding of the Cyclops, Polyphemos, by Odysseus and his men.  The iconography dates to as early as the 7th C. B.C., where it is evident on black figure vase painting.  In the Odyssey, Odysseus and his men eat one of the sheep owned by the Cyclops.  They are brought to the Cyclops cave and trapped within the cave by a rock covering the opening.  Polyphemos begins to eat the men, but then, after being offered wine with his dinner, falls asleep.  While he is asleep, Odysseus and his men ram a white-hot wooden pole into the single eye of the Cyclops, hence blinding him (This is the moment in the story depicted here).  The men then escape form the cave by riding beneath the bellies of Polyphemos’s sheep.

 

This statue group contains both classical and Hellenistic Baroque elements.  It is classical in its pyramidal, 2-dimensional composition, and in its use of Polykleitos’s proportions.  It is Baroque in the depiction of the most gruesome scene from the story and in the emotion depicted on the faces of Odysseus and his men.  Facial emotion is achieved through the of use of deep set eyes, open mouths, furrows in the brow, and the caliper lines around the mouth.  Look at the head of Odysseus below, and note the emotive, deep undercutting used and the expressive and dramatic hair.  Also notice his enlarged eyes, the furrows in his brow, and the gaping mouth.  Taken together, this is sculpture as dramatic theater! 

 

Odysseus from Sperlonga, detail of his head