Portfolio Artistic Monographs Volume 36 (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1898 edition. Excerpt: ... measure of their grandeur. He is even said to have avoided figures of mature age and dignity, not daring to go beyond beardless youth. It is said that Lysippos and Praxiteles approached most nearly to the truth of nature." From other ancient sources we know that one of the services of Polycleitos was that he had worked out for the use of sculptors a set of rules, which the Greeks called a canon, for the construction of the human figure. But a set of rules or system of proportions can only be of use to artists if it is based on a wide generalisation and on a multitude of observations and measurements of men as they are. If that was the method employed by Polycleitos, we can understand how critics came to speak of him as having made men better than they were, or as having gone beyond the exact truth of nature. A characteristic of almost every one of his statues was, we read in an ancient writer, that it stood resting its weight on one leg, as in the Diadumenos for example uno crure insistere). At first sight this does not seem any great innovation, because among bronze statuettes older Fig. 15.--Marble Statue. Diadumenos of Vaison. Fig. 16.--Marble Statue, Diadumenos British Museum. Farnese. British Museum. than his time we occasionally find a close approach to this attitude. I think that the true significance of his innovation can only be fully realised when, taking as an illustration of it the Diadumenos, we observe how, by means of the raised arms, the whole figure is thrown into a momentary poise which at once arrests the attention. Of the Diadumenos, or youth binding round his hair a diadem won in athletic games, several ancient copies exist in marble. But the one which is generally accepted as most true to the original of...