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THE NIOBE GROUP

The “ssss1” is a beautiful illustration of the more individualistic melody which the early fourth-century sculptor drew from the great orchestra of Greek genius. But we can gauge the effects of the new sympathies still more clearly in the celebrated “ssss1” group. Even in classical times it was a moot point whether its author was Scopas or Praxiteles. Probably the question will never be settled. Modern criticism, however, generally favours its attribution to Scopas. The group certainly contains all the characteristics which we have associated with his influence.

The series was excavated in Rome in 1583 a.d., near the Church of St. John Lateran. It was acquired by one of the Medici family, and placed in the garden of his villa, where it remained until it was removed to its present resting-place in the Uffizi Palace, Florence.

The Florentine “Niobides” are not from the chisel of a fourth-century craftsman. They are probably copies of those described by Pliny as having been brought to the Temple of Apollo Sosianus in 38 b.c. Indeed, other ancient versions of the great group exist, including a magnificent copy of the daughter of Niobe—“The Chiaramonti”—now in the Vatican. The “Niobides” were almost certainly originally designed to serve an architectural purpose. It has been surmised that they formed a pedimental group for a Temple of Apollo in Asia Minor. To judge of their relation to the rest of Greek art, they must be compared with such a pedimental group as that of the Parthenon, and we have, therefore, preferred to illustrate them from the collection of casts at Munich, instead of from the marbles in Rome or Florence. Incidentally, it is interesting to note that Phidias was content to allow three or four figures in the centre of the group to tell the story. We do not, for instance, even know whether the “ssss1” is a god, a hero, or merely a personification of one of the Athenian rivers. But in the ssss1 every figure is concerned with the main theme.