Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller.

  • Karl Otfried Müller
Date:
1852
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Ancient art and its remains, or, A manual of the archaeology of art / By C.O. Müller. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    119/664
    PRAXITELES. these two Niobids, the brother protected by his sister (D. A. K. Tf. 33, rt. e.), in the group M. Cap. iii, 42. in which however more accurate in- formation is desirable regarding the restorations, by means of which the sister appears to have been brought from the upright posture into this stooping attitude. [Scarcely tenable, 0. Jahn Archiiol. Beitr. S. 178,] Fabroni, Dissert. suUe statue appartenenti alia favola di Niobe. F. 1779 (with unsuitable illustrations from Ovid). H. Meyer, Propylaen Bd. ii. St. 2, 3, and Amalthea i. s. 273 (Ergiinzungen). A. W. Schlegel, BibliothSque Universelle 1816. Litter. T. iii. p. 109. [(Euvres T. 2.] Welcker, Zeitschr. i. s. 588 ff. Thiersch, Epochen, s. 315. 368. Wagner in the Kunstblatt 1830. N. 51 ff. [Welcker on the grouping of Mobe and her children, in the Rhein. Mus. iv. S. 233. Feuerbach Vatic. Ap. S. 250 ff. Guigniaut Religions de I'Antiqu. pi. 215 bis. Explic. p. 331-33. Ed. Gerhard Drei Vorles. 1844. S. 49 ff. Ad. Trendelenburg, Niobe, cinige Betrachtungen iiber das Schone u. Erhabene Berl. 1846.] Drawings in Fabroni, in the Galerie de Florence i . . iv. and the Galeria di Firenze, Stat. P. i. tv. 1 sqq. D. A. K. tf. 33, 34. Comp. §. 417. 127. Praxiteles also worked chiefly in marble, and for 1 the most part preferred subjects from the cycles of Diony- sus, Aphrodite and Eros. In the numerous figures which he 2 borrowed from the first, the expression of Bacchic enthusiasm as well as of roguish petulance was united with the most refined grace and sweetness. It was Praxiteles who in several 3 exquisite statues of Eros represented in consummate flower the beauty and loveliness of that age in boys which seemed to the Greeks the most attractive ; who in the unrobed Aph- 4 rodite combined the utmost luxuriance of personal charms with a spiritual expression in which the queen of love herself appeared as a woman needful of love, and filled with inward longing. However admirable these works might be, yet in 5 them the godlike majesty and sovereign might, which the earlier sculptors had sought to express even in the forms of this cycle, gave place to adoration of the corporeal attractions with which the deity was invested. The life of the artist with 6 the Hetffiras had certainly some influence in promoting this tendency; many a one of these courtesans filled all Greece with her fame, and really seemed to the artist, not without reason, as an Aphrodite revealed to sense. Even in the cycle of 7 Apollo, Praxiteles thought fit to introduce many changes; thus in one of his most beautiful and finely imagined works he brought the youthful Apollo nearer in posture and figure to the nobler satyric forms than an earlier artist would liavg done. Altogether, Praxiteles, the master of the younger, as 8 Phidias was of the elder, Attic school, was almost entirely a sculptor of deities; heroes he seldom executed, athletes never. 3. Of Praxiteles as a worker in marble, Plin. xxxiv, 8, 19. xxxvl, 4, C Phacdr. v. Prajf. Statins S. iv, 6, 26. 'O ;c«t«,«/|«? Akqus rolg ?.,^Li's iv/''YT« T-^j ■4^v)cii; '^a.^n, Diodor. xxvi. Eel. 1. p. 512. Wess.