Part 3

Another technical point about Alexandrian sculpture is connected with the local conditions of the country. Egypt is not a country of marble, and therefore the artists had to be economical in the use of it. This is probably the reason why so many Alexandrian heads have the faces complete in marble but the hair added separately in stucco, where the colouring would render the difference in material hardly noticeable. Thus many statues of Alexandrian origin have large pieces of the upper part of their heads smoothed away and left for the addition of stucco. This phenomenon is not confined to Alexandrian art, though it is much commoner at Alexandria than elsewhere, and where we find it in combination with the other qualities of impressionism and _morbidezza_ already noticed we may feel fairly confident in claiming an Alexandrian origin for the work in question.

This theory is admirably illustrated in the beautiful little head of a girl from Chios recently acquired by the Boston Museum (Fig. 13). The head shows us an extreme degree of _morbidezza_ in the softening of all the sharper facial lines such as eyelids and lips. The face is seen almost through a slight haze, and it thus gets some of the impression conveyed by distance. Where the head is worked it is quite rough and formal in purely impressionist style, but most of the hair was to be added in stucco, as the sharp cuts on the upper part of the head demonstrate. The head has been attributed too enthusiastically to Praxiteles himself. It is good work, but it is not by the author of the Hermes. The too mechanical smile and the too formal cheeks show a less masterly touch. But it is a perfect embodiment of Alexandrian art about 300 B.C. and must be unhesitatingly attributed to its real origin. We see a general copy of the Praxitelean long face with eyes about the centre of the head, Praxitelean proportions, and Praxitelean head-type.

Another head of Alexandrian origin is the fine bearded head of the Capitol Museum (Fig. 14), which is really almost a mask with the whole of the top and sides of the head left for stucco additions. The rough blocking of the beard shows the artist’s impressionist leanings. The long face is purely Attic, though perhaps closer to Bryaxis or some later artist than to Praxiteles. The head is more or less akin to the Sarapis head and to the other much finer bearded head which stands in close relation to the Sarapis, the well-known Zeus of Otricoli (Fig. 15). In the Otricoli head we have a similar prominence of the cheek-bones, a similar narrowing of the forehead above the frontal sinus--Attic features but not Praxitelean. The Otricoli Zeus is also a marble work cut for stucco additions, some of which are still visible, and we should probably recognize in it another work of early Alexandrian origin. It is perhaps not too daring to see the prototype of these Attic-shaped non-Praxitelean Alexandrian bearded heads in the Sarapis of Bryaxis.[38] Bryaxis or some other late Attic artist seems to have affected the bearded male type of Alexandria much as Praxiteles influenced the feminine ideal. Nottingham Castle contains a bearded head from Nemi,[39] which belongs to the same class of work. Here again we have the hair added in stucco and a general resemblance to the Otricoli type.

One of the new Greco-Alexandrian types was naturally the goddess Isis. A head in the Louvre (Fig. 16) gives us a version of this figure, which still, even in a poor Roman copy, shows us something of the languid elegance of the original. There is no traceable influence of Scopas in Alexandrian art. The Praxitelean and Attic tradition was transferred pure, and therefore the liveliness of movement and action in Pergamene art is quite absent from the art of Alexandria. Statues are mainly small, partly perhaps for economy, and partly from the lack of all desire for comparison with the gigantic masterpieces of ancient Egypt, and they are limited to simple standing or seated poses. An interesting statue of obvious Alexandrian origin is the priest of Isis in the Capitol (Fig. 17), which has been wrongly restored with a female head. This head is itself Alexandrian, as its hair demonstrates, but it has no connexion with the body, which is male, though draped in a light clinging tunic.[40] The tunic is interesting as giving us a good example of Alexandrian drapery. We may notice the very small closely set folds, and the extreme realistic care with which the loose parts of the drapery are distinguished from those tightly stretched. There is an element of artificiality no doubt in the way in which the folds radiate from the great jar carried against the chest and in their close symmetry of design, but as a whole the effect of texture is marvellously well secured. We have here a good example of the naturalism which now plays a large part in Alexandrian art.

Another statue which we must claim for Alexandrian art is the Capitoline Venus (Fig. 18), an extremely interesting statue not only as a first-rate original but from its relation to the Cnidian goddess of Praxiteles. The face and the hair show the usual qualities of Alexandrian impressionism; the fringed mantle thrown over the water-pot is the mantle of the Egyptian Isis, and the foreshortening of the foot of the amphora is just the pictorial touch we expect in Alexandrian art. But the most interesting light which this statue throws on Alexandrian art is its directness and want of subtlety in motive. The goddess of Cnidos is naked, but she is only half-conscious of her nakedness. Her eyes are fixed on eternity, and the actual bath is a mere accessory like the child of the Hermes. But the Capitoline goddess is not thinking of eternity at all. She is stepping into her bath, and is suddenly aware of a spectator’s gaze. She is the classical counterpart of Susannah in Renaissance art. All the vague beauty of the Attic statue is lost by the touch of Alexandrian realism, which amounts almost to vulgarity. As to the treatment of the body it is again real and not ideal. The back in particular shows a close study of the model without any of the selective idealism of classical art. Like the beautiful torso in Syracuse[41] it is a marvellous study from nature, not marked by any vestige of idealism.

Another head in the Capitol, the so-called Ariadne (Fig. 19), perhaps really a Dionysos, also suggests an Alexandrian origin with its long face, eyes close together, and crinkly hair.[42] It is a very favourite Roman head often copied, and must belong to some famous original. It wears a band, which presses into the hair, and its sleepy languid gaze is remarkable. This is produced by making the upper eyelid nearly straight and the lower one well curved. The face is long and heavy. Both eye-shape and head recall the Boston girl from Chios and other Alexandrian statues. The surface of the face is highly polished, the hair left crinkly and rough--an Alexandrian procedure. If we can accept this head, we must class with it two heads of identical facial type, the Eubouleus of Eleusis[43] sometimes attributed to Praxiteles, and the so-called Inopos from Delos in the Louvre (Fig. 20). Alexandrian dedications might plausibly be expected at Delos and Eleusis. Both Inopos and Eubouleus are highly impressionist. We have said enough to show that what we may call the serious art of Alexandria had certain characteristics of technique and execution, which render not impossible an attempt to classify and arrange an Alexandrian school of sculpture. We must now turn to another side of Alexandrian art which, if of less artistic interest, is nevertheless of paramount importance in our study of Hellenistic art.

The people of Alexandria were noted in the ancient world as scoffers and cynics. Their temper was fiery, their jests were brutal, and reverence of any kind was unknown to them. A cosmopolitan medley of Greek, Macedonian, native Egyptian, Jew, and every nation of the East, they were united only in their utter diversity of point of view and their scepticism of all ideal obligation. To such a people caricature and a love of the grotesque were almost second nature. By the side of the greater art of Alexandria it is easy to discern a lesser art of comic, grotesque, and obscene statuettes of every description. Greek realism in portraiture went back to the Pellichos of Demetrios with his great paunch and scanty hair in the early fourth century.[44] With the end of the century the satyr was a recognized medium for every variety of the _baroque_ and the _macabre_ in expression. But in Alexandria above all the grotesque exaggeration of natural defects found its true popularity. The negro, the hunchback, the drunkard, the _crétin_ of every kind, became popular artistic models. As if the delineation of youth and beauty was exhausted, the Hellenistic sculptors of Alexandria rushed into the portrayal of disease, of old age, and of mutilation in every form. They suffered as much as any modern decadent from ‘la nostalgie de la boue’. Here again we must beware of attributing to Alexandria all the grotesque figures of Hellenistic art and all its pieces of most painful naturalism. Pergamon, if not Rhodes, and doubtless Antioch must have played their part in the commonest form of artistic decadence; but we have so much of this work certified as Alexandrian, that we are justified in regarding Egypt as its chief and most popular home. Works of this type fall into two classes: the purely grotesque and the extremely naturalistic. The former class is more or less confined to statuettes, of which a number are collected in Perdrizet’s _Bronzes grecs d’Egypte de la Collection Fouquet_, and the account of the Mahdia ship in _Monuments Piot_ for 1909 and 1910. These include gnomes, pygmies, dwarfs (Fig. 21), and little obscene figures of all kinds. Needless to say, Praxitelean qualities of _morbidezza_ and impressionism have no place in art of this kind. We may presume that the demand was primarily foreign and not Greek, though all the skill of Greek sculpture is employed in the faultless execution of many of them. Their Alexandrian origin is better attested than that of the second class of extremely naturalistic works.

The latter are more important and more interesting. They include some of the most skilful works of sculpture ever achieved. The splendid negro’s head of Berlin[45] and the fisherman of the Louvre are of undoubted Alexandrian origin, but such works as the fisherman and the peasant woman of the Conservatori[46] or the old women of the Capitol and of Dresden are not so clear in their origin. When we get a statue of this type, combined with some clearly Alexandrian quality, such as the so-called Diogenes of the Villa Albani[47]--a naked beggar carried out with fine realism but also with considerable _morbidezza_ and impressionism--we may claim an Alexandrian origin; but impressionism is rare among such statues, as the artists seem to love to dwell on every detail. We may, however, regard them as a single class irrespective of their individual origin. The Louvre fisherman[48] deserves careful study for its absolutely unsparing truth to nature. The slackness of skin caused by long wading in water, the swelling of the veins through hard work, the feebleness and hollowness of chest due to old age or disease, the coarse peasant’s head, in which each wrinkle is faithfully delineated, deserve our wonder if not our admiration. The little companion pair in the Conservatori, though inferior in workmanship as Roman copies, are also full of interest for their vitality and truth. Finest of all perhaps is the splendid old woman’s head in Dresden (Fig. 22), with its marvellous mimicry of the ravages of age. Such art is decadent, because it is pessimistic, cynical, and unhappy, and because it refuses to select and idealize as it might do even in studies of decay; but of its brilliant execution there can be no doubt. Only the Chinese have made grotesques which can rank with the products of Alexandria.

This is a convenient place for dealing with the great series of Hellenistic reliefs, though it is no longer possible to maintain that these have a uniform and common origin either in Alexandria or in Imperial Rome.[49] We have seen their beginning in the Telephos frieze, the first to show us a pictorial background and an episodic mythological treatment. The appearance of the relief panel as a self-sufficient whole without architectural background is an invention of the Hellenistic age as early as the third century B.C., but it continues as an artistic force right through Roman into mediaeval and modern art. Certainly not even the Hellenistic reliefs have a common origin, but it is not impossible that Alexandria was the home of one class of them, the pre-eminently pastoral scenes like the Grimani reliefs in Vienna (Fig. 23). Alexandria was the greatest city of the Hellenistic world and the farthest from any conception of the pastoral life of the country. It is, therefore, possible that the rise of the pastoral tendency in art was connected with the Alexandrian craving for novelty and variety in a sphere of which it knew nothing. It is certain that the pastoral poems of Theocritos delighted the citizens of Alexandria, and the Hellenistic pastoral relief is strictly analogous to the poems of Theocritos. It shows a countryside of the Watteau type with satyrs and nymphs to correspond to the shepherds and shepherdesses of the court of Louis XIV. It is an artificial country without a touch of the reality of nature. Thus the pastoral reliefs and the poems of Theocritos represent the one element of idealism in the materialistic culture of Alexandria.

The Hellenistic reliefs may be divided into three classes: the pastoral reliefs such as the scenes showing sheep and a lioness and cubs, called the Grimani reliefs, in Vienna; mythological reliefs like the Bellerophon and Pegasus of the Palazzo Spada,[50] or Perseus and Andromeda of the Capitol[51] in Rome; and more complicated little scenes or groups like the Menander relief of the Lateran,[52] the Apotheosis of Homer,[53] the slaying of the Niobids,[54] or the visit of Dionysos to a dramatic poet.[55] They are all closely related to painting--how closely a reference to Pompeian wall-paintings or mosaics like the famous Praenestine pavement will show--but there are some differences between the groups which are worthy of mention. The pastoral scenes are straightforward and naturalistic. The little group of a countryman driving a cow past a ruined temple in Munich is a good example of straightforward naturalism. The mythological reliefs are usually distinctly affected in style. The gesture with which Perseus receives Andromeda is like that of an exquisite handing a lady from her carriage. Bellerophon waters his horse with a nonchalant air.[56] Daedalos and Icaros[57] present a curious mixture of affectation and realism. But it may now be regarded as certain that the Spada reliefs are Augustan in date at the earliest, and the affectation may well be imported. This is, indeed, partially demonstrated by a comparison of the two copies of the Daedalos-Icaros group in the Villa Albani, of which one is Roman, the other probably late Hellenistic. At the same time it is remarkable that the figures of the mythological reliefs all show the long slender proportions of Lysippos. This at once suggests a Rhodian connexion. Mythological groups are favourites in Rhodes, and it is the one place where the Lysippic tradition certainly lasted. It is not a wholly hazardous suggestion to propose a Rhodian origin for the mythological, and an Alexandrian origin for the pastoral, reliefs. One might be tempted, therefore, to ascribe the most intimate and domestic scenes to Pergamon, but there is insufficient evidence for proof at present, though the reliefs deserve careful study with these possible divisions in mind.

In general we can only point out their fine naturalism and perfect execution. Their artists seem to have mastered all the problems of perspective and to deal with the third dimension as easily as with the other two. It is natural to notice some advance in freedom of style. The earlier reliefs, like the Telephos frieze, or the Dolon relief,[58] are in less pronounced relief and with less carefully conceived perspective. Later reliefs like the so-called Menander relief show some of the figures in part detached from the background, while the perspective of a group is most subtly graded. We may compare the finest of them with the bronze doors of the Florentine Baptistery and their marvellous panels.

We are still left with one important monument of Alexandrian art which perhaps can be treated most fitly in connexion with the pastoral reliefs--the great statue of the Nile in the Braccio Nuovo of the Vatican (Fig. 24). The god lies out at length supported on his elbow, and little boys, representing the cubits of his annual rise, play about over him. The work is a Roman copy, and tells us little of technique, but the _putti_ are interesting as a typical Hellenistic development. This is the period in which Eros, who has been growing steadily younger from the youth of Praxiteles to the boy of Lysippos, turns finally into the chubby Roman Cupid or Amorino of Renaissance art. As such he helps Aphrodite in her toilet or performs all manner of tasks in the fine frieze of Erotes at Ephesos. It is the logical ending of the transformation of mythology into _genre_. Alexandrian art is essentially mundane and frivolous, sceptical and humorous. Her artists would have appreciated the earlier Pergamene developments, but they would have laughed at the clumsy idealism of the great altar frieze. Nor would they have felt much sympathy with the athletic art of Rhodes.

We may perhaps consider here the little we know of the art of Antioch, since it has certain points in common with that of Alexandria. The chief monument used in all discussion of Antiochene art is the statue of Antioch[59] on the Orontes, made by Eutychides, a pupil of Lysippos. A small copy of this in the Vatican shows us a fine seated figure crowned with the turreted crown, who rests her foot on a little male figure with outstretched arms representing the stream of the Orontes. Unfortunately the copy is too small to give us much information about the artist, though he seems to have used the same idea for another statue of the Eurotas. We have, however, a figure of Aphrodite from Egypt (Fig. 25), which shows a supporting Triton in an attitude indubitably connected with the figure of the Orontes. This is an Egyptian work, but it argues some artistic connexion between Alexandria and the Seleucid capital. Another link is given us by the statement[60] that the Apollo at Daphne near Antioch was made by Bryaxis, the author of the Alexandrian Sarapis.

Antioch, though like Alexandria in many respects--in her turbulent population, her cosmopolitanism, her irreverence for all authority--seems never to have developed the cultured love of literature and the arts which we find at Pergamon and on the Nile. She remained in all probability a collector and not an originator of art. The glimpses which we can get of her statues indicate a catholic taste. The Apollo seated on the Omphalos, which decorates the Seleucid coins, resembles the Lysippic type, and a Herakles type, also found on Syrian coins and reproduced in the bronze colossus of the Conservatori, has some connexion with the later Sikyonian school. By the side of these we must place the Apollo of Bryaxis.

Ephesos, a strong place more or less at the meeting-point of three empires, has left us considerable remains of Hellenistic art. Her bronze athlete at Vienna (Fig. 26) belongs to a later development of the Scopaic school; her frieze of Erotes[61] is more in the Alexandrian manner. Some beautiful bronzes, in particular a Herakles attacking a centaur,[62] are in the mixed Lysippo-Scopaic manner. There are also traces of Praxitelean influence in her art.

These cosmopolitan collecting centres cannot tell us much of the methods of Hellenistic art. Our best resource is to examine more closely the works of certified origin. Ephesos is, however, important for its school of copyists. The marble copies of the Attalid dedications were perhaps made here, and Agasias, the author of the Borghese Fighter,[63] was an Ephesian by birth, although a Rhodian by education.

III

THE RHODIAN SCHOOL

The school of Rhodes stands on a different footing from that of Pergamon or Alexandria. The latter were new foundations, or at least new societies, in which the Greek element was associated with much that was alien and exotic. The orgiastic wildness of Phrygia went far to influence the art of Pergamon, whether in its earlier sensuality or its later pageantry of exaggerated triumph. In Alexandria and in Antioch non-Greek races imported into Hellenic art the cynicism and the world-weariness of older and exhausted civilizations. But Rhodes was pure Greek and a living, growing, prosperous community without recollections of humiliation and defeat. Rhodes as a city had been born of the union of Lindos, Kameiros, and Ialysos at the end of the fifth century. The fourth century brought slow growth, but the successful defence against Demetrios Poliorcetes in its last decade opened a new chapter in Rhodian history. Henceforward Rhodes was mistress of an empire. She acquired possessions on the mainland; her fleet rode and controlled her neighbouring seas; her trade stretched out tentacles in all directions; and among the semi-barbarous Hellenistic kingdoms she alone carried proudly the torch of undefiled Hellenic tradition. Chares of Lindos, a pupil of Lysippos, headed the long roll of her sculptors; her painter, Protogenes, had but one rival in the Sikyonian Apelles. Thus from the first she boasted great artists, closely connected too with the school of Sikyon. Her Dorian sympathies naturally isolated her from the Attic school and from the mixed Praxitelean-Scopaic school of the Ionian mainland. Her Peloponnesian and Sikyonian connexions identified her at once with athletic art and with the school of Lysippos. Thus while Alexandria and Pergamon patronized marble sculpture, Rhodes now becomes the home of bronze casting. Her vast Colossus was matched by at least one hundred more statues of remarkable size, and the roll of her artists as recorded in inscriptions is noteworthy for its length. The great siege gave that impulse of idealism which is necessary for the growth of any artistic development, and the traditional friendship with the rising power of Rome helped her to preserve her prosperity and independence later than any of her neighbours. The last great work of Rhodian art, the Laocoon, is almost as late as the Empire, and the whole period of two hundred and fifty years between it and the Colossus is marked by an immense output of sculpture.