Greek Sculpture. Edmund von Mach
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Название: Greek Sculpture
Автор: Edmund von Mach
Издательство: Parkstone International Publishing
Жанр: Иностранные языки
Серия: Temporis
isbn: 978-178310-752-0, 978-1-78042-977-9
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Another peculiarity of the human eye must be taken into consideration in designing extended compositions. The eye glides not smoothly from one end of a line to the other, but by jerky leaps and bounds, as people with sensitive eyes can discover through self-observation, and others by watching people read. A limited space can be seen at one glance; if one focuses one’s eyes on a single spot, one can see a short distance in every direction. When reading, we focus our eyes not on the beginning of each line, but slightly to the right of it. After the words or syllables falling within the range of the focus have been read, the eye jumps to the right, and so on, until all the words on the line have been read. If three short words can be read at one glance, and there are nine words in the line, it will take three movements of the eye to read the line. Add another word, and an additional movement for this word will be required. This is a waste of energy, because the addition of three words would not require more than this one. Everyone knows that lines of certain lengths can be more easily read than others.
In a relief the lines are not continuous; every now and then prominent masses call for accurate eye focus. Such eye-arresting masses are distinguished in technical parlance from the lines that carry the eye, and are often called spots. The heads of prominent figures, their hands or elbows, the hilts of their swords, and the like, are spots. The artists who place them where the eye naturally stops in its jerky advance, save the spectator the effort of focusing his eyes upon them, and help tremendously in making his task easy.
The Parthenon sculptors and their contemporaries believed in keeping the spectator continually engaged. Wherever the eye alighted, it fell upon a prominent spot. This explains the crowded compositions: the eye should never rest on an empty place; in their view this would have wasted vital energy. This absence of empty space in ancient works has often been noticed, and the term horror vacui coined. Horror vacui faded in the fourth century, reappearing later. The sculptors of the Mausoleum in Halikarnassos (350 B. C.) apparently held that an occasional rest would please the eye more than an obligatory survey of each significant element in a composition. Their reliefs (1 and 2), uncrowded, present many empty spaces to rest the eye. Of the many devices the Greeks used to ease human vision, none is more remarkable than the practice of isokephalism, which required all the figures’ heads to be at nearly the same level. The Greeks seem to have felt it necessary to make it easier for the eye to glide along a relatively straight line rather than move in a zigzag. The Parthenon’s isokephalism frieze executes this technique so expertly one views it unconscious to incongruities arising from such a depiction; as, for example, when the heads of men on horseback are not much higher than those of the men on foot, or when the horses’ heads remain level with those of the men. In earlier times, before the greatest men’s skill and genius had taught them to combine the appearance of verisimilitude with this device, isokephalism led to some remarkable compositions. In the frieze from Assos (Illustration 1, 2), where a standing boy serves reclining men, portraying all the heads on the same level has made giants of the men and a pygmy of the boy. The sculptors readily accepted reproach for carving a ridiculous relief rather than make it harder for the eye to view; this says much about Greek artists impressed, even in the earliest times, of the necessity not only of conceiving ideas that were profitable and pleasant in understanding, but also the obligation of representing them so as the spectator receives a sensation of physical pleasure.
Terracotta Column-Crater, attributed to the Group of Boston 00.348, c. 360–350 B. C. Terracotta, h: 51.5 cm. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
Group with the Typhon, west pediment, old Temple of Athena, Acropolis, Athens, c. 580–570 B. C. Tufa, l: 440 cm. Acropolis Museum, Athens.
The Colouring of Greek Sculpture
For most people Greek sculpture means beautifully white sculptured marble. Few realise, however, that bronze and not marble[11] was the Greeks’ favourite material; all their marble was coloured as well. When Renaissance artists began studying remains of the ancient past, existing Greek or Roman statues showed no traces of colour. More than a thousand years had passed since their creation, and erosion had wiped all colour into distant memory; excavated statuary underwent a vigourous scrubbing process that removed not only any encrustation of their long burial but also any paint that might have been preserved. This inadvertent cleansing led Renaissance artists, and the moderns after them, to believe in purity of form, which neither required nor permitted the addition of colour. At an early date, however, scholars began casting doubt on this so-called purity of form. They based their arguments upon four well-established facts. Firstly, the Roman Catholic Church has always had coloured statues of saints. The Church, highly conservative, has practised colouring its saints since its inception, and its inception was contemporaneous with the artistically active centuries of the early Empire. Thus, several questions arise: If classical sculpture was not coloured, where did the Christians get their different practice? If their practice consciously deviated from that of their secular contemporaries, why do we not find references to them in any of the early church fathers?
Secondly, secular sculpture down to the Renaissance was also frequently coloured. Again, this may survive from ancient customs, for the sculpture of those times was a distant descendant of classical sculpture. Thirdly, Egyptian sculpture, and probably the Assyrian, was profusely coloured. The interaction between the Greeks and other older groups was at times intimate; Herodotos conducted a systematic study of the differences between the Greeks and the Egyptians. Had he never seen a coloured statue at home, he might have been expected to at least mention the different practice of the Egyptians; on this point he is silent. Fourthly, Renaissance sculptors’ belief in purity of form in classical times fails as an argument either way, for it was obviously founded on the appearance of ancient statues in their time.
These considerations raise grave doubts about the generally accepted absence of colour in Greek marble, especially since the advocates of the purity of form in ancient times have advanced no better argument than bad taste, with extremists criticising it as barbarous. Being entirely subjective, such an argument is best left to itself; it needs no refutation. Evidence to this effect can be gathered from three sources – the literature of the ancients, the remains of their art, and practical experiments.
Nothing in ancient literature has produced a definite response as to whether the Greeks painted their statues. Mr. Edward Robinson[12] concludes from the silence of ancient writers on this point that mentioning the act would have been like saying “water is wet”; that, or that it never was practised.[13] This latter thesis is contradicted not only by more recent finds, but also by certain clear remarks recorded in Greek and Roman literature. Pliny quotes Praxiteles as saying that he prized those of his statues the highest which the famous painter Nikias had touched (manum admovissei), for “so high an opinion he had of his colouring of statues” (circumlitio); and Plato, in discussing the relative value of colours, makes light of the artist who, in attempting to apply the most beautiful colour to the most beautiful part of his statue, would paint the eyes golden instead of black. Such and similar passages prove conclusively that at least some statues in antiquity were coloured; and this, as Robinson has pointed out, goes far in proving that it was the universal custom of the ancients to paint their marble statues.
Recent finds and careful examination of existing monuments strengthen this opinion. Many statues preserving traces of colour have been found: on the Aegina pediments, for instance, and the draped female figures from the Acropolis (Illustration СКАЧАТЬ
Bronze preponderated over marble, with the exception of temple sculpture, at the rate of four or five to one. Accurate figures at present cannot be obtained. The preponderance, however, of bronze over marble is proved beyond a doubt.
Edward Robinson (1858–1931): Museum director. Graduated from Harvard in 1879, where he lectured on classical antiquities between 1893 and 1994, again between 1897 and 1902. He was appointed Director of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts between 1902 and 1905 and Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York between 1910 and 1931. His role as Director occurred at a time when conception of museums was changing and his legacy was composed as much of plaster cast as of original classical objects.
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