Читать книгу Olympic Victor Monuments and Greek Athletic Art онлайн

69 страница из 104

PLATE 4

Statue of the Doryphoros, after Polykleitos. Museum of Naples.

A good example of asymmetry is afforded by the so-called Spinario of the Palazzo dei Conservatori in Rome612 (Fig. ssss1). This justly prized statue shows more asymmetry, perhaps, than any other down to its date—just before the middle of the fifth century B.C. Though its composition is such that there is no vantage-point from which it forms a harmonious whole, still its effect on the beholder is far from displeasing. Such a creation shows that a Greek artist, even without paying attention to the symmetrical arrangement of parts, could at times produce an attractive piece of sculpture.

ssss1

Since Greek art in the main was idealistic, we should not be surprised to discover in athletic sculpture a tendency toward assimilating victor statues to well-known types of gods or heroes, especially to those of Hermes, Apollo, and Herakles, who presided over contests or gymnasia and palæstræ. This phenomenon is only a further example of the extraordinary, almost superhuman, honors which were paid to victors at the great games. In the absence of sufficient means of identification, it is often very difficult to distinguish with certainty between statues of victors and those of the gods and heroes to whom they were assimilated. This difficulty, as we shall see, is especially observable in the case of Herakles. Even later antiquity recognized that statues of athletes were sometimes confused with those of heroes, just as those of heroes were with those of gods, as we learn from a passage in Dio Chrysostom’s oration on Rhodian affairs.613 This difficulty is one of the most perplexing problems that still face the student of Greek sculpture.