Praxiteles

“ And Praxiteles, as Posidippus relates in his book about Cnidus, when he fashioned the statue of Aphrodite of Cnidus, made it like the form of Cratine, of whom he was enamoured, that the miserable people might have the paramour of Praxiteles to worship. And when Phryne the courtesan, the Thespian, was in her bloom, all the painters made their pictures of Aphrodite copies of the beauty of Phryne; as, again, the sculptors at Athens made their Mercuries like Alcibiades. It remains for you to judge whether you ought to worship courtesans. ”

“ That, of course, is the inimitable Hermes of Praxiteles, which everybody knows through reproductions and photographs, but which in the original is so incomparably beautiful that no reproduction can hope to give an adequate idea of it, either in the expression of body and features, its poise and grace, or in the exquisite sheen of marble. They have wisely set it off by itself in a room which cannot be seen from the great main hall of the museum, and the observer is left to contemplate it undistracted. It seems generally to be agreed that it is the masterpiece of extant Greek sculpture. ”

“ It is clear that Praxiteles was a strongly original and inventive genius, who was not afraid to give his own impression of established types. He was the first who dared to portray Aphrodite naked; out of the gross and bestial Satyr he made a delightful elf of the woods, and he turned the vigorous athlete Apollo into a slender stripling.
Of Scopas the Parian, the second great sculptor of the fourth century, we have no important remains. ”

“ Praxiteles gave outward form to this ideal in his statue of Hermes, and though the Athenian ideal was not complete, Athenian education produced a warrior like Miltiades, statesmen like Themistocles and Pericles, a poet like Sophocles, artists like Pheidias and Praxiteles, philosophers like Socrates and Plato, and a historian like Thucydides. ”

“ Praxiteles was accustomed to reproduce the form of Phryne, and her statue, carved in gold, stood in the temple of Apollo at Delphi; and when she was accused of corrupting the youth of Athens, her advocate, Hyperides, procured her acquittal by suddenly unveiling her charms before the dazzled eyes of the assembled judges. Apelles was at once the painter and the lover of Laïs, and Alexander gave him, as the choicest gift, his own favourite concubine, of whom the painter had become enamoured while pourtraying her. ”

“ And meanwhile Praxiteles had already brought to perfection (Paus. 1, 2, sec. 4) the ideal of Demeter, mother-like, as Heré—whom we still call Juno now—but softer-featured, and her eyes more closed.
And so for mother earth, as for the rest, the best representation of the divine was the human. ”

“ The peculiar abilities of Praxiteles were admirably displayed in the Venus of Cnidus, which, with{155} the exception of the Olympian Jupiter of Phidias, has received higher and more unqualified eulogiums from ancient writers, than any other work of Grecian art. ”

“ It has the same simplicity and the same care in execution as the Greek works, but in beauty it will not compare with them; and one feels regret that so great an artist should have spent his powers on so unsuitable a subject as the rivets and plates of a suit of armour. The lady, though not without charm, seems artificial and affected beside the exquisite freshness of the girl of Praxiteles. ”

“ The place takes its name from the temples, which while large enough to hold the bronze tripods that stand upon them, contain very remarkable works of art, including a Satyr, of which Praxiteles is said to have been very proud. Phryne once asked of him the most beautiful of his works, and the story goes that lover-like he agreed to give it, but refused to say which he thought the most beautiful. So a slave of Phryne rushed in saying that a fire had broken out in the studio of Praxiteles, and the greater number of his works were lost, though not all were destroyed. ”

“ Equally good, too, are his statue of Trophonius, erected in the oracular cave of that divinity, his numerous chariots, his Horse with the Panniers, and his hounds.
Praxiteles, who excelled more particularly in marble, and thence acquired his chief celebrity, also executed some very beautiful works in bronze, the Rape of Proserpine, a Father Liber, a figure of Drunkenness, and the celebrated Satyr. He also made the youthful Apollo, known as the “Sauroctonos” (Lizard-killer) , because he is aiming an arrow at a lizard which is stealing towards him. ”

“ Greek art that the greatest artists dared to show the goddess of love in perfect nudity. The statues of Phidias still retain the severe expression of her divine character, but Praxiteles endeavors to show her beauty as in primitive times without any dress, in a careless but graceful and artistic pose. So at least appears the most authoritative record of her appearance on the Cnidian coin. Other statues, especially the Vatican marble known as the Venus of Praxiteles, are partly dressed. It is assumed that many replicas of ancient masterpieces did not follow their originals in all details. ”

“ Nicias was an encaustic painter, and hence it seems clear that his circumlitio—his mode of finishing the statues, so highly prized by Praxiteles—must have been the application of encaustic painting to those parts which the sculptor wished to have ornamented. For it is quite idle to suppose a sculptor like Praxiteles would allow another sculptor to finish his works. The rough work may be done by other hands, but the finishing is always left to the artist. ”

“ But of course if we want to know the real Praxiteles we have only to take our ticket to Olympia and worship there at the shrine of Hermes. Here for the first time we have an unquestionable original work by the hand of a great master. This Hermes was found more than thirty years ago by the German excavators in the very temple of Hera where Pausanias had seen him. No copy or cast or photograph can do more than faintly shadow the incomparable beauty of the marble. ”

“ The finest productions of our own age are in a measure reproductions; they cannot be called creations, like the statue of the Olympian Jove. Even the Moses of Michael Angelo is a Grecian god, and Powers's Greek Slave is a copy of an ancient Venus. The very tints which have been admired in some of the works of modern sculptors are borrowed from Praxiteles, who succeeded in giving to his statues an appearance of living flesh. ”

“ The god is without the traditional symbols of his divinity. He is merely a beautiful man. He stands leaning easily against a tree, supporting on one arm the child Dionysus, to whom he turns his gracious head with the devotion and love of a protector. The face, in its expression of sweet majesty, is distinctly a personal conception. The low forehead, the eyes far apart, the small, playful mouth, the round, dimpled chin, all bear evidence to the individual quality which Praxiteles infused into the ideal thought of the god. ”

“ That line of the hip that undulates so voluptuously is taken from the sleeping Antiope.—Those plump, well-shaped hands might be claimed by Danaë or Magdalen. Dusty antiquity itself supplied much material for the composition of your young chimera; those strong and supple loins, about which you twine your arms so passionately, were carved by Praxiteles. The divinity left everything for the express purpose of putting the toes of her charming foot outside the ruins of Herculaneum, so that your idol should not be lame. Nature also has contributed its share. ”

“ A critic of a taste so severe that he could pass by the works of Scopas and the Hermes of Praxiteles without uttering a syllable of admiration was not likely to take much pleasure in the productions of the decadence. Pausanias notices few and praises none of the successors of Praxiteles. Of the colossal image of Olympian Zeus at Athens, which must have been executed in his own lifetime, he says condescendingly that it was good for its size. ”

“ And when we are told, that some artists imitated Praxiteles, who took his concubine Cratina for the model of his Cnidian Venus; or that others formed the graces from Lais; it is to be understood that they did so, without neglecting these great laws of the art. Sensual beauty furnished the painter with all that nature could give; ideal beauty with the awful and sublime ”

“ Praxiteles executed two statues of Venus—the one draped, and the other naked. The people of{156} Coös chose the former, as the most delicate; but the Cnidians immediately purchased the latter. This work is mentioned by Lucian as the masterpiece of Praxiteles; and it is also the subject of numerous epigrams in the Greek Anthology. Its fame was so great that travelers visited Cnidus on purpose to see it. The original work was destroyed at Constantinople, in the fifth century, in the dreadful fire which consumed so many of the admirable monuments of art, collected in that city. ”

“ The most famous work of Praxiteles was the Aphrodite of Cnidus in southwestern Asia Minor. This was a temple-statue; yet the sculptor, departing from the practice of earlier times, did not scruple to represent the goddess as nude. With the help of certain imperial coins of Cnidus this Aphrodite has been identified in a great number of copies. She is in the act of dropping her garment from her left hand in preparation for a bath; she supports herself chiefly by the right leg, and the body has a curve approaching that of the Hermes, though here no part of the weight is thrown upon the arm. ”

“ Nothing could better show the incredible wealth of Greek plastic art, indeed, than the fact that this exquisite Aphroditè was produced by a nameless sculptor, and seems to have been far surpassed by many other works of its own period. In type, it belongs to a school which forms a transition between the perfect early grace and purity of Pheidias, with his pupils, and the later, more self-conscious and deliberate style of Praxiteles and his contemporaries. ”

“ Our knowledge of Praxiteles has received a great addition, and has been placed on a satisfactory basis, by the discovery at Olympia in 1877 of his statue of Hermes bearing the infant Dionysus, a statue which has become famous throughout the world (Greek Art, fig. 43 and Plate VI. fig. 82) . Hermes is represented as in the act of carrying the child Dionysus to the nymphs who were charged with his rearing. He pauses on the way, and holds out to the child a bunch of grapes to excite his desire. The young child can hardly be regarded as a success; he is not really childlike. ”

“ The discovery of the Hermes of Praxiteles, almost the only certain original of a great Greek sculptor which we possess, has furnished a new and invaluable fulcrum for the study of ancient art. In emulation of the achievements of the Germans at Olympia, the Greek archaeological society methodically excavated the Athenian acropolis, and were rewarded by finding numerous statues and fragments of pediments belonging to the age of Peisistratus, an age when the promise of art was in full bud. ”

“ ELDERLY MAN, FROM STELE.
as children had no childish dress, but wore clothes like those of adults. One has only to compare, in the celebrated group of Praxiteles, the figure of the child Dionysus with that of Hermes, who carries him, to realize fully the lacuna thus produced in ancient art. An early Athenian stele (Fig. 61) bears in relief the figure of a young boy named Callis [tratus?] , who holds in one hand a bird, while a dog leaps up to greet him. ”

“ The period was one of artistic luxury, the Parthenon had been completed, and Greece had her golden age of Art, Science, and Philosophy. Here Praxiteles, the great sculptor, second only to Phidias, comes upon the scene, and we may with confidence 343accept his design of Apollo’s Lyre as a true representation of the instrument as it existed in his day, and, it may be assumed as used in Apollo’s Temple, and by the master-musicians. ”

“ In short, the form of the god has the superb perfection, as the face has the dignity, which was attributed to Pheidias. Nevertheless, the Hermes illustrates sensual loveliness of the later school. The freedom with which the god is conceived belongs to an age when the chains of religious belief sat lightly upon the artist. The gds of Praxiteles are the gods of human experience, and in his treatment of them he does not always escape the tendency of the age of decline to put pathos and passion in the place of eternal majesty. ”

“ The discovery of the Hermes has naturally set archaeologists searching in the museums of Europe for other works which may from their likeness to it in various respects be set down as Praxitelean in character. In the case of many of the great sculptors of Greece—Strongylion, Silanion, Calamis and others—it is of little use to search for copies of their works, since we have little really trustworthy evidence on which to base our inquiries. But in the case of Praxiteles we really stand on a safe level. ”

“ Phryne (fl. circa 328 b.c.) , a celebrated Athenian hetaira, mistress to Praxiteles, one of whose many statues of her is known as the Cnidian Aphrodite, while Apelles took her for his model for the Aphrodite Anadyomene.—T.
[360] Apelles (fl. circa 332 b.c.) , the famous Greek painter. His Aphrodite Anadyomene (vide supra) was originally painted for the Temple of Æsculapius in Cos. It was afterwards bought by Augustus and placed in the Temple of Cæsar in Rome.—T.
[361] Praxiteles (circa 360 B.C.—circa 280 b.c.) , the greatest Greek sculptor after Phidias. ”